Black Health, Finances Improve
By GENARO C. ARMAS
WASHINGTON (AP) – Boosted by rising incomes and better access to health care, blacks made marked improvements in key health indicators over the 1990s, according to a private analysis of government data released Thursday.
Teenage birth rates declined for blacks more than any other minority group, while more blacks mothers received early prenatal care.
Cases of tuberculosis also were less prevalent among minorities, especially blacks and Asians, researchers from the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center reported.
Still, long-standing disparities between whites and minorities persist, and may widen with unemployment rising and governments shifting health care money from outreach and preventative programs to combating bioterrorism, said Dennis Andrulis, lead author of the study.
“That’s a one-two punch that may keep the positive momentum from moving forward,” Andrulis said after a news conference where he released the report.
The study used socio-economic data from the Census Bureau and statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Among blacks living in cities, there was a 14 percent decline in the teenage birth rate, matching the decline for urban whites. The rate decreased 5 percent for urban Hispanics and 9 percent for urban Asians.
Declines were not as steep for suburban residents of most groups, countering previous long-held notions that health care and outreach were much poorer in the central city than surrounding communities, Andrulis said.
Teenage births still make up a smaller proportion of births in the suburbs than in the city; for instance, in 2000, 21 percent of the black women living in cities who gave birth were teenagers, compared with 17 percent of those in the suburbs.
There was a nearly 20 percent gain in the rate of urban black mothers, regardless of age, who received early prenatal care, and a 15 percent gain in the suburbs, outpacing all groups.
The report “looks like it’s tracing out very important consequences that one might expect. Good economic times are a powerful force for affecting lots of social policies,” said Roderick Harrison, demographer for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a nonpartisan group that studies issues of concern to minorities.
But again, proportions trailed that of whites. For instance, just less than 9 of 10 white mothers living in cities obtained prenatal care in the first trimester of their pregnancy in 2000, compared with just over 7 of 10 black or Hispanic mothers and 8 of 10 Asian mothers.
Over the 1990s, the population of the country’s Asians, and especially Hispanics, soared due to increased immigration.
But efforts by health care workers to reach out to non-English speaking immigrants may have been hampered because of a difficulty to communicate, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
These outreach efforts, and program in general aimed at narrowing disparities, are in danger of being slashed because of tight budgets, Benjamin said.
Among other findings:
_The percent of women giving birth to a baby weighing less than 5.5 pounds, considered to be low birth weight, rose slightly or remained unchanged for all groups except blacks living in cities, declining slightly from 13.6 to 13.1.
_Tuberculosis decreased among all race and ethnic groups, and was lowest among whites with a rate of 2 cases per 100,000. However, the rate did increase among immigrants, from 24.5 per 100,000 in 1996 (the earliest for which data is available) to 26 per 100,000 in 2000.
The study, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health care philanthropic group, focused on the 100 largest cities and their suburbs. References to blacks and whites in the study referred to those who were not of Hispanic ethnicity. Hispanics can be of any race.
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On the Net:
SUNY Downstate report: http://www.downstate.edu/urbansoc_healthdata/
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