Health Disparities

This chapter covers health disparities and inequalities in health outcomes across various diseases, health behaviors, exposures, social determinants, and healthcare access by race and ethnicity, sex, gender, socioeconomic status, nationality, and other social strata. As the most trusted workforce, nurses have a professional and moral responsibility to shed light on health disparities where they exist and to advocate for holistic policies that address the root causes of disparate health outcomes in marginalized and oppressed communities globally. Disparities in lifestyle behaviors are well documented and often driven by systemic and structural factors. Thus, solutions to health inequities should include interventions that tackle social determinants and structural factors. Global health disparities exist between high-income and low- and middle-income countries. This chapter provides an overview of studies that describe health disparities in socially at-risk populations, interventions that mitigate health disparities, and policies that have the potential to reduce and eliminate health disparities across the care continuum.