Heckler Report On Health Disparities

INTRODUCTION
Race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status are used to characterize health disparities globally. Thirty years ago, the Health and Human Services Secretary, Margaret M. Heckler, created a taskforce to examine health concerns of Blacks and other minority populations in the United States 1. The Heckler Report advocated for changes in the Federal Government’s approach to addressing health disparities. Following dissemination of the Heckler Report, a number of books, manuscripts, and policies were published to bring attention to a systemic lack in health equity among physicians across the U.S.. Lack of health equity ultimately leads to unequal treatment of diverse patients and contributes to the growing disparities seen in national health. In response to these growing disparities, in 2002, the Kaiser Family Foundation examined physicians’ perceptions of disparities and noted that physician gender and race had an impact on whether the physician believed that disparities
Similar results were found in the 2015 Kelly Report, which sought to examine the current trends in health disparities with policymakers and healthcare leaders and to improve wellness and health