Disparities in Mortality: Challenges for Public Health

The rate at which people die is an issue of paramount importance to , public health practice and research. Cause-specific mortality rates are determined and evaluated annually by health services organizations to provide insight to the magnitude, causality, and distribution across different diseases and conditions. Trends in death rates, over time, are evaluated to determine areas of need for health care services, health education, health promotion, and health finance. An issue that complicates this analysis of death rates and trends is disparity. Eliminating health disparities involves mitigating differences in health and disease by gender, race or ethnicity, education or income, disability, geographic location, or sexual orientation. This study death rate rates over a 10-year period with emphasis on disparity across racial and ethnic groups. Data from the Mississippi Department of Health for the years 1995-2004 were acquired and analyzed to determine the relationship in death rate trends among Whites and non-Whites. Study findings show that Non-Whites have statistically significantly higher death rates than Whites from heart disease, nephritis, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, infant mortality, neonatal mortality and post-neonatal mortality. This disparity exhibits an opposite relationship in death rates from malignant neoplasm, cerebrovascular disease, emphysema, and pneumonia, with Whites exhibiting higher rates. The implication to public health is that Whites and non-Whites must be targeted for specific diseases and conditions and population-wide interventions may not be the must effective way to decrease disparities.