WASHINGTON, Nov 25, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Conference Commits to Increase Coverage of African American Health Issues

The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) will present its Conference on Health Disparities on January 30-31, 2009 at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. This conference is part of the NABJ Media Institute's professional development program to better train our journalists on the increasing number of health disparities in the black community and to help empower their newsrooms toward increased coverage.

"This is the first time NABJ is committing to programming that deals solely with the health of the black community," said NABJ President, Barbara Ciara .....Full Story

New York Times columnist and physician Pauline Chen in her latest "Doctor and Patient" column discusses racial disparities in health care. According to Chen, the election of Sen. Barack Obama as president indicates that in "politics, the racial barriers might have fallen, ... but what about in health care?" Research has shown that some patients have better health care experiences when their physicians are of the same race or ethnicity, according to Chen. She adds that "race and ethnicity also influence the experiences of minority physicians."

Chen, an Asian-American woman whose parents are Taiwanese immigrants, writes, "When working on consults with a white medical student or resident, I have watched physicians from other departments in the hospital look past me in order to speak to them .....Full Story