Race and Ethnic Differences in Health: Epidemiology, Behavior and Policy

The course highlights the nature and extent of racial/ethnic disparities in health, how to place these disparities in a conceptual context, and it reviews representative descriptive and causal studies of possible explanations of disparities.The course will focus on health disparities between three racial/ethnic groups in the USA: non-Hispanic Black people, non-Hispanic white people and Hispanic people. These categories are imperfect and imprecise, and obscure important variation within each group, but are widely used by government statisticians, academic researchers and policymakers. The course will begin with a review of the human capital model of demand for health and healthcare over the life course. Conceptual models used by sociologists will also be reviewed and integrated into the human capital model. The course will review the extent and magnitude of health disparities by race and ethnicity, and how those disparities evolve over the life course from birth to old-age. The course will review and assess research intended to explain (identify causes of) racial and ethnic disparities at each age. Some major government interventions to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in health at each age will be reviewed and assessed in terms of efficacy. It is recommended that students have taken PPHA 38300 Health Economics and Public Policy prior to enrolling.