Ending health disparities requires full federal government, National Academies panel says
To narrow the nation’s deeply entrenched health disparities, a permanent entity with regulatory powers should be created by the president to oversee health equity efforts across the entire federal government, says a report issued Thursday by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
In its many recommendations, the committee that wrote the report called for Congress to create a scorecard to assess how new federal legislation might affect health equity; urged all federal agencies to conduct an equity audit of current policies; asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create and facilitate the widespread use of measurements of social determinants of health, including racism; and urged the Office of Management and Budget to oversee efforts to improve the poor and sporadic collection of data about the nation’s racial and ethnic groups.
