Poster Presentations (Group I)

Latinos in the United States are vulnerable to poor health outcomes not only because they face significant barriers to accessing the health care system, but also because they receive disparate care when they do seek medical services.  Therefore, as the debate on health care reform gains momentum, new proposals must aim to improve Latinos' access to health coverage and care and encourage practices and models that improve the quality of health care received.  The National Council of La Raza (NCLR)—the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S.—is developing principles that federal reform must meet in order to ensure that Latinos have equitable access to quality services.  For this project, NCLR reviewed  major data systems and studies that report health quality measures by race and ethnicity.  This presentation highlights a number of indicators of quality disparities and describes the implications of these findings for designing health care reform policies that will ensure that all Americans have an equal chance to achieve good health outcomes.