108th Congress

Closing the Health Care Gap Act

S. 2091

Background

S. 2091, the Closing the Health Care Gap Act, would build on legislation addressing health disparities in order to take the necessary next steps to reduce and eliminate health care disparities. The bill addresses five areas that are crucial to closing the health disparity gap in America: 1) improved health care quality and data efforts, 2) expanded access to quality health care, 3) strong national leadership, cooperation, and coordination, 4) professional education, awareness, and training, and 5) enhanced research. The research section would encourage expanding research to identify sources of racial and ethnic disparities and assess promising intervention strategies. It would also promote research on ethical issues and other barriers to eliminating disparities. Research would be conducted under the auspices of various Federal agencies, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Provisions of the Legislation/Impact on NIH

Section 502 of S. 2091 would require that the Director of NIH, in consultation with the Director of the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, expand and intensify NIH research related to the sources of health and health care disparities and increase efforts to recruit minority scientists and research professionals into the field of health disparity research.

Status and Outlook

S. 2091 was introduced by Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) on February 12, 2004, and was referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. No further action has occurred on this legislation.