Root Causes of Health Disparities
Health disparities are significant and measurable differences in health that occur between groups of people. They can be caused by a number of factors, but are often driven by social and economic inequities. Examples of these root causes include systems of oppression, like systemic racism or discrimination.
Other root causes include factors like unequal access to routine or preventive health care, unequal exposure to poorer quality housing, and unequal access to clean water, clean air or food.
The reports on this page explore health disparities in hospitalization data for asthma, heart attacks and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
