Title:
The Effect of Racial and Ethnic Discrimination/Bias on Health Care Delivery (New PA)

Contact:

Objective of Project:

(1) The objectives of this initiative are to improve the measurement of racial/ethnic discrimination in health care delivery systems through improved instrumentation, data collection, and statistical/analytical techniques, and (2) to encourage research to reduce the prevalence of racial/ethnic health disparities through a better understanding of the role that racial/ethnic discrimination plays and through the development of interventions to reduce the influence of racia l/ethnic discrimination in health care delivery systems.

Description of Project:

For the purposes of this program announcement (PA) health care delivery is defined as the provision or receipt of a broad range of health-related services, including preventive, primary, ambulatory, emergency, in-patient, specialty, and long-term care. Health care delivery systems are defined as: insurance plans; hospitals, clinics, and private physician offices; and public and community health facilities that provide or finance health care delivery. Race is defined as a continuously evolving social construct used to categorize individuals into groups that have been based on the physical characteristics (e.g., skin color, hair texture or other distinctive characteristics, etc.) of an individual or their ancestors. Ethnicity refers to cultural groups that have been typically defined by a common language, religion, nationality, or heritage.

This PA focuses on the examination of overt as well as subtle racial/ethnic discriminatory behaviors and processes perceived or experienced by historically disadvantaged racial/ethnic minority groups and their contributions to the persistent disparities in the receipt of quality health care and disease outcomes that have been observed among these populations.

The PA specifically encourages: (1) Development of innovative methods of measuring racial/ethnic discriminatory behavior, evaluating perceptions of exposure to racial/ethnic discrimination, and developing novel approaches for the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data for the purpose of describing discriminatory behavior and exposure to racial/ethnic discrimination; (2) Development of data resources including the identification and/or development of new data collection modalities and evaluation of existing data collection instruments/modalities; (3) Development of descriptive and analytical studies that examine racial/ethnic discrimination as a risk factor for racial/ethnic disparities in disease incidence, treatment, and outcomes; (4) Development of data resources including the identification and/or development of new data collection modalities and evaluation of existing data collection instruments/modalities; (5) Examination of the prevalence of institutional racism in healthcare delivery systems and/or policies and their contributions to racial/ethnic health disparities; and (6) Development and evaluation of interventions that enhance cross-cultural communication, reduce discriminatory behaviors, reduce actual and/or exposures to racial/ethnic discrimination, and reduce or eliminate the health-related consequences of racial/ethnic discrimination.