274924 Measuring Health Disparities: Challenges and Opportunities

Monday, October 29, 2012 : 2:50 PM - 3:10 PM

David R. Williams, PhD, MPH , Department of Society, Human Development and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA
     
This presentation addresses important but neglected issues in the content validity of health disparities. It argues that understanding and effectively addressing health disparities requires greater attention to measuring all of the facets of the critical, health-related aspects of race and socioeconomic status (SES). Specifically, it will discuss measurement issues with regards to racial status, racial residential segregation, epigenetics, stigma and unconscious bias, psychosocial stressors and intersectionality.

Learning Areas:
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
1. The learner will be able to explain how failure to conceptualize and measure health disparities comprehensively can lead to limited understanding and misguided interventions 2. The learner will be able to identify specific concepts that are critical to describing the epidemiology of health disparities and identifying effective interventions to address them across the continuum of disease.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been a principal investigator on multiple NIH grants. My research is centrally interested in exploring social influences on health and my research expertise includes the trends and determinants of socioeconomic status (SES) and racial differences in health and the multiple ways in which racism can affect mental health.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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