EthnicMajority

(AP) Minority children have fewer opportunities than their white peers to gain access to high-quality health care, education, safe neighborhoods and adequate support from the communities where they live, according to a nationwide survey of professionals who work with young people.

Of the professionals surveyed, 59 percent said young white children in their communities have “lots of opportunity” to play in violence-free homes and neighborhoods, while only 36 percent said the same about Hispanic children, 37 percent about African-American children and 42 percent about Native American children.

The survey refers to young children as 8 and under.

Fifty-five percent of respondents viewed young white children as having good access to high-quality health care, while 41 percent said the same of Hispanic, Arab American and American Indian/Alaska Native children and 45 percent said the same for African-American and Asian-American/Pacific Islander children.

The survey shows that children of all ages from low-income families, regardless of race, are at a greater disadvantage, in the view of the professionals who work with them.

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(Los Angeles Times) More than 20 African American religious and community leaders called Wednesday for Alice Huffman to resign as president of the California State Conference of the NAACP after she and her organization endorsed a ballot measure that would legalize marijuana in the state.

Bishop Ron Allen and other members of the International Faith-Based Coalition said Proposition 19 on the November ballot would hurt African Americans, and he criticized Huffman’s backing of the measure.

“Why would the state NAACP advocate for blacks to stay high?” Allen said at a Capitol news conference. “It’s going to cause crime to go up. There will be more drug babies.”

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(Private MD Labs) Black patients who receive a positive cancer test are almost twice as likely to die from their disease as other races, according to a new report from researchers at the University of Michigan.

The study found that the five-year survival rates for black patients with colorectal cancer are 10 percent lower. The numbers are worse when it comes to uterine cancer. Black women diagnosed with the disease are 25 percent more likely to die of it within five years.

Both of the cancers are highly treatable when they are caught in early stages, but can be deadly when left untreated, the report notes.

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(Los Angeles Times) Given the inequality in healthcare in the United States, it’s no surprise that some groups of people suffer far worse health outcomes than people with better resources. But if there is one group that has been especially overlooked in this equation, it’s black and Latino boys. The major factor in their poor health, according to a new report by the California Endowment, is where they live. Growing up in poor and stressful neighborhoods with limited healthcare resources leads to poor health.

According to the findings in the report:

* The odds of poor health outcomes for boys and men of color are more than two times higher than for white boys and men in California.
* Latino boys are 4.1 times more likely than white boys to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
* African-American boys are 2.5 times more likely.
* Latinos are 3.1 times more likely to have limited access to health care and 4.8 times more likely to lack health insurance.
* Asthma disproportionately affects children who live in poorer neighborhoods.
Black young men have a homicide rate 16 times greater than that of young white men.
* African-American and Latino children are 3.5 times more likely to grow up in poverty compared to whites.

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(San Francisco Examiner) Obesity has been a hot topic lately. Childhood obesity has drawn the attention of the White House and some have even called it a matter of national security. On Tuesday, June 29th, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America’s Health issued their report “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2010.” The report painted a bleak picture for the nation, especially in the South.

Overall, 38 states had obesity rates over 25%. This is a drastic increase since no state was over 20% in 1991. In the past year alone, the number of states with an obesity rate over 30% has doubled. Last year there were only 4 states over 30%, now there 8 states. 28 states saw an increase.

The South did the worst of any region. 10 of the 11 states with the highest rates were in the South. Michigan, who tied for 10th place, was the only state north of the Mason-Dixon that made the top 10. Florida, the only Southern state that wasn’t in the top 20, was in a 3 way tie for 36th place. The state with the lowest rate of obesity was Colorado with a 19.1% rate.

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(Cancer Network) Lung cancer is not a discriminate disease, but the disease burden is especially high on African Americans in the U.S. The statistics are stark: African-American men are 37% more likely to develop lung cancer than white men and are 22% more likely to die of it. In addition, only 12% of African Americans live longer than five years after a diagnosis of lung cancer, compared with 16% of whites, according to a recent report by the American Lung Association (see Fact box).

One suggested reason for this gap in outcomes is differences in race-based genetics. In the era of personalized medicine and treatments that target specific disease pathways, identifying genetic differences among populations is becoming increasingly important to optimize benefit.

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(WABC) Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers in men. For African American the numbers can be frightening. Rates of prostate cancer in the US are 60 percent higher among African American men.

Long before social networking and the flood of information on the Internet, the barber shop was the original social club where men gathered to talk politics, sports, and in recent times, about prostate cancer.

“We cracked jokes about it, reading the pamphlets,” said Virgil Simons, the founder of The Prostate Net.

This idea of using the barber to spread the message about prostate health in minority communities was the brainchild of Simons, who created The Prostate Net website right after he recovered from prostate cancer surgery.

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(CNN) African American and Hispanic children may not be receiving the same care and treatment for asthma as Caucasian children, even when they have the same access to care.

A study published in this week’s medical journal, Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, examined more than 800,000 children who were covered by the same health insurance system provided by the U.S. military. They found the prevalence and severity of asthma were higher in black and Hispanic children than their white peers.

Researchers suspect that just because patients used the same health plan didn’t necessarily mean they were getting the same care. Experts say this may be a result of the differences in the way various ethnic groups utilize the health care system or differences in the treatments received.

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(San Francisco Chronicle) San Francisco public health officials and Asian community leaders are trying to eradicate hepatitis B from the city – a tall order, considering the city has the highest concentration of hepatitis B in the country, as well as the highest rates of liver cancer, which is usually caused by the virus.

The key to wiping out hepatitis B – and protecting people from liver cancer – is to make screening a basic part of health care, especially among Asians, say doctors and Asian American health advocates who have launched a campaign to get more people tested.

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(Health Behavior News Service) Medicare’s Part D prescription medication management program, also known as Medication Therapy Management, could be off limits to some of the patients who need it most — older African-Americans and Hispanics — a new study finds.

Medicare introduced the program, Medication Therapy Management or MTM, in 2006 as part of the Part D prescription drug program. MTM provides face-to-face counseling, phone consultation or consultations by mail with pharmacists or other health care providers to help people with chronic illness resolve problems with taking medications. The goal is to improve patient health, reduce costs and minimize side effects.

In 2010, to be eligible for the program, a person must be enrolled in the Medicare Part D drug program, have at least three chronic health conditions, take eight or more medications covered by Part D and spend at least $3,000 yearly on the medications.

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