Health Care Organizations' Use of Data on Race/Ethnicity to Address Disparities in Health Care

represented a key transition point in the field of disparities research. Up to that point, the vast majority of studies had been descriptive in nature, documenting racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in specific domains of clinical care. Researchers, funding agencies, and health care policy-makers agree, however, that studies of racial/ethnic disparities should move beyond documenting disparities to focus on either understanding the causes of disparities or the development and testing of interventions designed to reduce or eliminate disparities. Such a movement is already occurring, as several recent papers provide sophisticated analyses of either underlying mechanisms or approaches to eliminating disparities Given the range of potential causes of disparities, elimination of disparities will require action at several levels: federal policy; state and local policy; public and private purchasers of health care; health plans; large organizational providers like hospitals and medical groups; individual providers; patients and family members; and community groups.