Last week, the ColorsNW article Not All Health Care is Created Equal examined the overwhelming ethnic disparities in the American health care systems. This week, we will explore some of the ways the health care community is combating these disparities to bring balance to the U.S. health system.

At times, those who are working to fix the disparities in the American health care system may feel like they are tilting at windmills. The problem has so many faces and there are no one-size-fits-all answers. While teasing out the reasons for health disparities among ethnic groups is complex, finding the solutions to fix the problems may be an even more intractable issue.

To be sure, the problem of unequal health care in America is daunting. For example, African American children are more likely than White children of comparable economic conditions to have asthma, seek help from the emergency room and fail to receive the latest asthma treatments .....Full Story

Access to affordable health care accounts for some of the racial and ethnic health disparities among the general U.S. population. But does access to free health care by military women and men eliminate disparities? When it comes to the Air Force, the news is mixed, according to the doctoral dissertation of Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing student Jennifer Hatzfeld, PhD(c), RN, an active-duty officer in the Air Force Nurse Corps. Hatzfeld, whose doctoral studies have been funded by the Air Force, explored the relationship between deployment readiness among airmen and women and known racial and ethnic disparities in chronic illness. She hypothesized that active duty personnel would manifest health disparities similar to those in the general population, with the greatest adverse effects among those of lower rank. The findings, in part, did not match the hypotheses .....Full Story