• Donna L Washington, Jacqueline Bowles, Somnath Saha, Carol R Horowitz, Sandra Moody-Ayers, Arleen F Brown, Valerie E Stone, Lisa A Cooper, and Writing group for the Society of General Internal Medicine, Disparities in Health Task Force.
• Division of General Internal Medicine, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, CA, USA. donna.washington@va.gov
• J Gen Intern Med. 2008 May 1; 23 (5): 685691685-91.

AbstractRacial-ethnic minorities receive lower quality and intensity of health care compared with whites across a wide range of preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic services and disease entities. These disparities in health care contribute to continuing racial-ethnic disparities in the burden of illness and death. Several national medical organizations and the Institute of Medicine have issued position papers and recommendations for the elimination of health care disparities. However, physicians in practice are often at a loss for how to translate these principles and recommendations into specific interventions in their own clinical practices. This paper serves as a blueprint for translating principles for the elimination of racial-ethnic disparities in health care into specific actions that are relevant for individual clinical practices. We describe what is known about reducing racial-ethnic disparities in clinical practice and make recommendations for how clinician leaders can apply this evidence to transform their own practices.

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