Report Finds Persistent Health Gaps In Minnesota

Despite having some of the best health indicators in the country, there remain some troubling gaps in outcomes in Minnesota, with most clearly delineated by race and income.

That's the conclusion of a new report by the Minnesota Department of Health submitted to the Legislature earlier this week. Lawmakers had requested the report to obtain more data about health inequities in the state. Department officials conducted interviews with more than 1,000 individuals at 180 different healthcare organizations statewide.

The findings were sobering:

• African-American and Native-American infants were twice as likely to die in their first year of life compared to white babies

• African-American women and Latinas were more likely than whites to be diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer

• Minnesotans with severe mental illness die a quarter century sooner than other residents

• Poverty rates for children of various ethnic groups are multiples higher than those of white children

“These health disparities persist and are neither random nor unpredictable,” the report said. “The groups that experience the greatest disparities in health outcomes also have experienced the greatest inequities in the social and economic conditions that are such strong predictors of health.”

The report recommended that the Minnesota Department of Health work to advance healthcare equity statewide, including reassessing its grant-making processes to outside organizations, and that it bump up its scrutiny of analyzing institutions that may be advanced inequities in healthcare.

Last month, the Health Department also created a separate Center for Health Equity to bring more focus to the issue.

"Stark inequalities persist in some parts of our society - even after factoring in individual choices," said Ed Ehlinger, M.D., Minnesota's Health Commissioner. "So to address these inequities, we need to include the issue of addressing health disparities as part of a broad spectrum of public investments in housing, transportation, education, economic opportunity and criminal justice."