Study suggests flaw in methods used to measure racial health disparities

Politico Pro: Study Challenges Data For Multiracial Patients
Just weeks after HHS released the first national strategy to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities, a new study published in the journal Demography suggests there is a flaw in the method used to measure racial health differences: it does not adequately account for people of mixed race. The Affordable Care Act imposed new reporting requirements to track health disparities. But one of the major national health surveys currently conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics asks multiracial individuals to select which race "best describes" their background, and public health analysts often lump them in with single-race groups based on this "best race" designation (Feder, 4/22).

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This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.