Minority Health
A guide to health disparities among U.S. racial minority groups.
Health Equity Reads
Books
Below is a select list of recently published books about health equity and health disparities in medicine. All books in this list are available for check out at UW Libraries, many are also available as eBooks.
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The Health Care Professional's Guide to Cultural Competence
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Publication Date: 2023Build the skills you need to understand and care for a wide diversity of patients! The Health Care Professional's Guide to Cultural Competence, 2nd Edition provides a guide to safe and effective cross-cultural care. Applying theory to practice, the book begins with an overview of clinical cultural competence. This guide shows how to apply cultural competence across diverse populations, and then discusses considerations in working with specific populations. -
Race and Social Policy
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Publication Date: 2023Social policy is not blind. It has been at the forefront of perpetuating structural inequality in many of the systems charged with serving and protecting. The impact of race on social policy is linked to historical (intended and unintended) patterns of discrimination that have resulted in disparate impact for many across their life course. This book uses critical race theory to examine key social policies. -
Diversity and Inclusion in Quality Patient Care
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Publication Date: 2016It has been well documented that minorities experience inadequate emergency treatment and face poorer healthcare outcomes. The need to equip emergency healthcare professionals to practice medicine that is culturally competent in the broadest possible sense has never been greater. Diversity and Inclusion in Quality Patient Care aims to fill this need. -
Global Child Health: A Toolkit to Address Health Disparities
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Publication Date: 2018This timely resource brings child health to the forefront of global health and the crucial goal of universal equity of care. Its resource-based framework offers contemporary perspective on factors driving child health disparities, specific vulnerabilities of underserved children, and ways readers can become effective advocates for children. Provides an extensive toolkit to aid professionals in multidimensional screening for child, newborn, maternal, and post-natal health as well as socioeconomic determinants of health. -
Health Promotion in Multicultural Populations: A Handbook for Practitioners and Students
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Publication Date: 2015The 3rd edition offers both students and practitioners an indispensable resource on assessment and implementation guidelines for promoting health and enhancing behaviors that optimize health in any cultural community. Leading experts explore a wide range of topics, including the context of culture, cross-cultural perceptions of health, conceptual approaches to multicultural health promotion, health disparities, and the contributions of multicultural populations. -
Music, Health and Wellbeing: Exploring Music for Health Equity and Social Justice
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Publication Date: 2018This book explores the power music has to address health inequalities and the social determinants of health and wellbeing. It examines music participation as a determinant of wellbeing and as a transformative tool to impact wider social, cultural and environmental conditions. -
On Race and Medicine: Insider Perspectives
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Publication Date: 2015A collection of enlightening personal essays written by an interdisciplinary group of scholars, physicians, and medical school deans. They invite readers to evaluate disparities differently when considering race in American healthcare. They address the very real, everyday circumstances of healthcare differences where race is concerned, and shine light on the realities of race itself, inequalities in healthcare, and on the very way these American complexities can be discussed and considered. -
The Quest for Health Equity
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Publication Date: 2014Currently, health disparities represent the most important challenge of public health. This book proposes to unveil often undetected, neglected aspects of health disparities embedded in all aspects of health and healthcare as well as medical research. Concepts are discussed based on critical appraisal of available evidence in current literature.
Ebooks
The titles listed below are available online and may be accessed for free by individuals with borrowing privileges at UW Libraries.
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Strategies for Deconstructing Racism in the Health and Human Services
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Publication Date: 2016Within the context of the nation's changing demographic and cultural landscape, this one-of-a-kind book brings together a national roster of leading practitioners and scholars who recommend innovative strategies for reducing racial and ethnic disparities that are pervasive across all fields of practice in the health and human services. -
Racial Wellness : A Guide to Liberatory Healing for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color
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Publication Date: 2023A guide and workbook centered on self-care, healing, and empowerment for Black, Indigenous, and people of color -
Guide to Culturally Competent Health Care
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Publication Date: 2014Be prepared for the culturally rich and diverse world of healthcare! This concise, easy-to-read handbook prepares you to relate to individuals from different cultures. Use it in class and clinical now and as a reference throughout your career. -
Mapping Race: Critical Approaches to Health Disparities Research
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Publication Date: 2013Race must inform how we design large-scale data collection and how scientists utilize race in the context of specific research questions. This landmark collection argues for the recognition of those implications for research and suggests ways in which they may be integrated into future scientific endeavors. It concludes on a prescriptive note, providing an arsenal of multidisciplinary, conceptual, and methodological tools for studying race specifically within the context of health inequalities. -
Cultural Competence in Health Education and Health Promotion
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Publication Date: 2013Edited and written by a stellar list of contributors who are experts in field, this book describes essential theories, models, and practices for working with race, ethnicity, gender, and social issues. -
Engaging Black and Minority Ethnic Groups in Health Research: 'Hard to Reach'? Demystifying the Misconceptions
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Publication Date: 2021In this crucial contribution to current debates, Natalie Darko exposes the misconception that health research and health services are equally effective for all and highlights their failures in engaging with Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups. Drawing on case studies, this book presents essential examples of culturally tailored recruitment, engagement and partnerships with BME groups in research and public engagement. Drawing attention to the organisational, structural and cultural barriers that prevent access for BME groups, this important book exposes the practices within health research, clinical practice, commissioning and health services that perpetuate the stereotyping of BME groups as 'hard to reach'. -
Health Disparities, Diversity, and Inclusion: Content, Controversies, and Solutions
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Publication Date: 2018This introductory text addresses this topic head on, exploring steps that must be taken to prepare for the rapidly changing demographics in American society, including immigration reform (emerging majorities), and evidenced based information substantiating the fact that diversity matters in terms of the provision of health care. -
Health Disparities Among Under-Served Populations: Implications for Research, Policy, and Praxis
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Publication Date: 2012This anthology critically examines the devastating impact of race, class, and gender on the health and health care of African Americans, Latinos and American Indians, with particular focus on children and adolescents. -
Not All In
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ISBN: 1421451115Publication Date: 2025Examines how health policy shifts fail to fully serve immigrant communities due to structural racism and anti-immigrant rhetoric and enforcement measures. Despite progressive policy strides in health care reform, immigrant communities continue to experience stark disparities across the United States
Health Equity Videos
Below is a select list of multimedia resources on the topic of health equity and health disparities in the United States. All videos are available to stream for free online.
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CC Grand Rounds: Contemporary Issues in Graduate Medical Education: Factors in Communicating with Diverse PatientsNIH Clinical Center Grand Rounds Presentation by Eliseo Perez-Stable, MD, Director, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, National Institutes for Health (NIH) (July 13, 2016). Runtime: 56:52.
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How to Achieve Health EquityUW Department of Medicine Grand Rounds presentation by Dr. Marshall Chin, The Richard Parrillo Family Professorship in Healthcare Ethics, Associate Chief and Director of Research, Section of General Internal Medicine (September 2015). Runtime: 52:52.
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The Impact of the Pandemic and the "Racial Reckoning" on Health Outcomes and American DemocracyDepartment of Medicine/Institute for Common Power Diversity Lecture Series panel with Reuben Moore, EdD, MBA (Minnesota Community Care), Keri Leigh Merritt, PhD (historian, filmmaker), Robert L. Tsai, JD (Boston University School of Law and David Horne, MD, MPH (University of Washington). Facilitated by Yohuru Williams, PhD (University of St. Thomas, Minnesota). (Feb 2023). Runtime: 1:25:36
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Naming, Measuring, and Addressing Racism and Other Systems of Structure InequityUW Department of Medicine Grand Rounds presentation by Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones, Senior Fellow, Satcher Health Leadership Institute, Morehouse School of Medicine (March 2015). Runtime: 1:04:20.
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Population Health Approaches to Reduce Health DisparitiesUW Department of Medicine Grand Rounds presentation by Arleen Brown, MD, PhD, Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine (April 5, 2018). Runtime: 1:01:23.
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Read the Signs? Helping Patients Achieve Health Literacy in Health CareUW Department of Medicine Grand Rounds presentation by Dr. L. Ebony Boulware, Professor of Medicine, Professor of Community and Family Medicine (February 2017). Runtime: 1:00:51.
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Reducing Disparities in Health Outcomes: NIMHD Agenda on EquityUW Department of Medicine Grand Rounds presentation by Dr. Eliseo J. Perez-Stable, MD; Director, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), National Institutes of Health (March 2, 2017). Runtime: 1:00:10.
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Solving the Health Disparities Conundrum: Race Relationships and Quality of Health CareNIH Wednesday Afternoon Lecture by Lisa Cooper, MD, MPH, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (May 11, 2011). Runtime: 58:59.
African-American Reads
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Black and Blue: The Origins and Consequences of Medical Racism
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Publication Date: 2012Black and Blue is the first systematic description of how American doctors think about racial differences and how this kind of thinking affects the treatment of their black patients. This book penetrates the physician's private sphere where racial fantasies and misinformation distort diagnoses and treatments. -
Black Health: The Social, Political, and Cultural Determinants of Black People's Health
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Publication Date: 2023Dispels any notion that Black people have inferior bodies that are inherently susceptible to disease. This book examines the ways that Black people’s multiple identities—social, cultural, and political—intersect with anti-Black institutions, such as housing and health care to determine their poor outcomes in pregnancy, pain management, sleep, and cardiovascular disease. -
Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination
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Publication Date: 2011The Black Panthers are most often remembered for their revolutionary rhetoric and militant action. Here Alondra Nelson deftly recovers an indispensable but lesser-known aspect of the organization's broader struggle for social justice: health care. The Black Panther Party's health activism--its network of free health clinics, its campaign to raise awareness about genetic disease, and its challenges to medical discrimination--was an expression of its founding political philosophy and also a recognition that poor blacks were both underserved by mainstream medicine and overexposed to its harms. -
Inequality and African-American Health: How Racial Disparities Create Sickness
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Publication Date: 2016Shirley A. Hill shows that racial disparities in health reflect racial inequalities in living conditions, incarceration rates, family systems, and opportunities and that these racial disparities often cut across social class boundaries and have gender-specific consequences. Bringing together data from existing quantitative and qualitative research with new archival and interview research, this book marks a crucial advance in the fields of family studies, race and ethnicity studies, and medical sociology. -
The Power to Heal: Civil Rights, Medicare, and the Struggle to Transform America's Health Care System
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Publication Date: 2016The book draws the reader into the struggles of the unsung heroes of the transformation, black medical leaders whose stubborn courage helped shape the larger civil rights movement. Recipient of the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize from Vanderbilt University Press for the best book in the area of medicine. -
The Racial Divide in American Medicine: Black Physicians and the Struggle for Justice in Health Care
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Publication Date: 2018Documents the struggle for equity in health and health care by African Americans in Mississippi and the United States and the connections between what happened there and the national search for social justice in health care. This book will stimulate dialogue, apology, and reconciliation, with the ultimate goal of improving disparities in health and health care and addressing long-standing injustices in our country.
Asian-American Reads
The U.S. Census Bureau defines Asians as "people having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent."
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Experiences of Asian American Health Care Professionals in Utah: An Exploratory Study of an “Overrepresented” but “Underresearched” Population byPublication Date: 2023In health care, Asian Americans are viewed as "overrepresented," but little research has explored the experiences of Asian American health care workers. The authors use Asian Critical Culture (AsianCrit) to understand how Asian American health care professionals are affected by racism, particularly by the model minority and the forever foreigner concepts. The purpose of this project is to examine how Asian American health professionals in Utah understand race/ethnicity and what this means for their professional identities.
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Health Literacy as a Social Determinant of Health in Asian American Immigrants: Findings from a Population-Based Survey in California byPublication Date: 2015Investigation of the level of health literacy across five subgroups of Asian American immigrants exploring the association between health literacy and self-rated health status and symptoms of depression. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2015, Vol.30(8), pp.1118-1124. Open access, peer-reviewed article.
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Moving the dial to advance population health equity in New York City Asian American populations byPublication Date: 2015The New York University Center for the Study of Asian American Health (CSAAH) has identified core themes and strategies for advancing population health equity for Asian American populations in New York City that are rooted in the following: social determinants of health; multisectoral, community-engaged approaches; leveraging community assets; improved disaggregated data collection and access to care; and building sustainability through community leadership and infrastructure-building activities. American Journal of Public Health, July 2015, Vol.105 Suppl 3, pp.e16-25.
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Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans
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Publication Date: 2022As Asian Americans investigate the personal and societal effects of longstanding cultural narratives suggesting they take up as little space as possible, their mental health becomes critically important. Yet despite the fact that over 18 million people of Asian descent live in the United States today -- they are the racial group least likely to seek out mental health services. Weaving her personal narrative as a Taiwanese American together with her insights as a clinician and evidence-based tools, Dr. Jenny T. Wang explores a range of life areas that call for attention, offering readers the permission to question, feel, rage, say no, take up space, choose, play, fail, and grieve. -
Praeger Handbook of Asian American Health: Taking Notice and Taking Action
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Publication Date: 2009A team of noted specialists explains the health issues most common to Asian Americans, how and why treatment disparities exist, and the changes necessary to improve the health of this growing population. -
Toward Health Equity for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders: The Health Through Action Model byPublication Date: 2014This article discusses W.K. Kellogg Foundation's (WKKF) 16.5 million dollars investment in capacity building for improvement of health outcomes for Asian American (AA), Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) populations through five-year initiative Health Through Action (HTA). It discusses Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF) as regranting and technical assistance intermediary of HTA, HTA evaluation framework, and increased visibility of AA and NHPI health issues. The Foundation Review, 2014, Vol.6(1), pp.10-24.
Hawaiian & Pacific Islander Reads
The U.S. Census Bureau considers this ethnic group to include "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa or other Pacific Islands.”
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Health conditions and behaviors of native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander persons in the United States, 2014 : data from the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander National Health Interview Survey byCall Number: Online accessPublication Date: July 2017Report published by The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.
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The Healthy Ancestor: Embodied Inequality and the Revitalization of Native Hawaiian Health
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Publication Date: 2010Native Americans, researchers increasingly worry, are disproportionately victims of epidemics and poor health because they "fail" to seek medical care, are "non-compliant" patients, or "lack immunity" enjoyed by the "mainstream" population. Challenging this dominant approach to indigenous health, Juliet McMullin shows how it masks more fundamental inequalities that become literally embodied in Native Americans, shifting blame from unequal social relations to biology, individual behavior, and cultural or personal deficiencies. -
Indigenous Public Health: Improvement through Community-engaged Interventions
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Publication Date: 2022Income, education, job security, food and housing, and gender and race are all examples of the social determinants of health. These factors influence the health and well-being of patients, as well as how they interact with health care providers and receive health care, and unfortunately, certain biases can become a barrier to maintaining good health in some communities. Indigenous groups in North America and US-associated Pacific jurisdictions have been subjected to occupation and forced relocation, mandated boarding schools, and other attempts by state and federal governments to eliminate their cultural strengths and resources. I -
Introduction: shining the light on Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander health byCall Number: online accessPublication Date: 2015Out of the shadows and into the light, the health and health care issues faced by our AA and NHPI communities across the US, its territories, and freely associated states matter more and more to the vitality and future of the nation. Journal of health care for the poor and underserved, 1 May 2015, Vol.26(2), pp.vii-xiv.
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National Veteran Health Equity Report 2021 – Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Veteran Chartbook by
Publication Date: 2021The National Veteran Health Equity Report provides information regarding disparities in patient experiences and health care quality for Veterans who obtain health care services through the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Data on disparities are presented by the sociodemographic characteristics of race/ethnicity, gender, age group, rurality of residence, socio-economic status, and service-connected disability rating, and by cardiovascular risk factors of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes. This chartbook focuses on experiences of care and health care quality of Asian American and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) Veterans receiving care in VHA.
instrument, and the fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2019 VA External Peer Review Program
quality monitoring program. -
The Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander National Health Interview Survey: Data Collection in Small Populations byCall Number: online accessPublication Date: November 2017Changes in federal data collection policies on race/ethnicity, coupled with the unprecedented and novel use of the American Community Survey as a sampling frame for rare populations, provided a unique opportunity to collect high-quality health data in the NHPI population. The NHPI NHIS provides the first nationally representative data to fill the gaps in knowledge on the health of the NHPI population and makes it possible to compare these data with national estimates for other racial/ethnic groups. Public Health Reports, November 2017, Vol.132(6), pp.606-608.
Hispanic / Latinx-American Reads
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Latinx refers to "any person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race.”
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At Risk: Latino Children's Health
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Publication Date: 2011This book contains chapters written by the country's leaders in Latino children's health, and includes pieces on issues such as diabetes, nutrition, and even substance abuse. -
Global Mental Health: Latin America and Spanish-Speaking Populations
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Publication Date: 2020Global Mental Health provides an outline of the field of mental health with a particular focus on Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world. The book details evidence-based approaches being implemented globally and presents ongoing state of the art research on major mental disorders taking place in Latin America, including work being done on understanding Alzheimer's, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, and other psychoses. -
Latinx Mental Health
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Publication Date: 2022Despite similar vulnerability to mental illness as the general population, adults within the Latinx community often do not receive treatment for severe mental illnesses. Latinx communities face health disparities and lack of access to mental healthcare due to language barriers, lack of health insurance coverage, lack of cultural competence from healthcare practitioners, and more. It is essential to promote positive mental health practices within the Latinx community and to educate healthcare practitioners in cultural competence. -
Making the Mexican Diabetic: Race, Science, and the Genetics of Inequality
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Publication Date: 2011This innovative ethnographic study animates the racial politics that underlie genomic research into type 2 diabetes, one of the most widespread chronic diseases and one that affects ethnic groups disproportionately. Michael J. Montoya follows blood donations from "Mexican-American" donors to laboratories that are searching out genetic contributions to diabetes. His analysis lays bare the politics and ethics of the research process, addressing the implicit contradiction of undertaking genetic research that reinscribes race's importance even as it is being demonstrated to have little scientific validity. In placing DNA sampling, processing, data set sharing, and carefully crafted science into a broader social context, Making the Mexican Diabetic underscores the implications of geneticizing disease while illuminating the significance of type 2 diabetes research in American life. -
Radical Health
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Publication Date: 2023In Radical Health Julie Avril Minich examines the potential of Latinx expressive culture to intervene in contemporary health politics, elaborating how Latinx artists have critiqued ideologies of health that frame wellbeing in terms of personal behavior. Within this framework, poor health--obesity, asthma, diabetes, STIs, addiction, and high-risk pregnancies--is attributed to irresponsible lifestyle choices among the racialized poor.
Indigenous / Native American / Alaskan Reads
The U.S. Census Bureau considers anyone with ethnic "origins in any of the original peoples of North, South America, and Central America, who maintain tribal affiliation or community attachment" as part of this ethnic group.
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Advancing Health Equity for Native American Youth: Workshop Summary
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Publication Date: 2016In May 2014, the Academies held a follow-up workshop titled Advancing Health Equity for Native American Youth. Participants discussed issues related to (1) the visibility of racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care as a national problem, (2) the development of programs and strategies by and for Native and Indigenous communities to reduce disparities and build resilience, and (3) the emergence of supporting Native expertise and leadership. This report summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop. -
Health and Social Issues of Native American Women
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Publication Date: 2012This book serves as a much-needed source of information on the social and health issues that impact the health of Native American women in the United States, accompanied by invaluable historical, cultural, and other contextual data about this sociocultural group. -
Indigenous Health and Well-Being in the COVID-19 Pandemic
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Publication Date: 2022This book investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and well-being of Indigenous Peoples and assesses the policy responses taken by governments and Indigenous communities across the world. Bringing together innovative research and policy insights from a range of disciplines, this book investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and well-being of Indigenous Peoples across the world, with coverage of North America, Central America, Africa, and Oceania. -
Indigenous Knowledge and Mental Health
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Publication Date: 2022This book brings together Indigenous and allied experts addressing mental health among Indigenous peoples across the traditional territories commonly known as the Americas (e.g. Canada, US, Caribbean Islands, Mexico, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Brazil), Asia (e.g. China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Indonesia), Africa (e.g. South Africa, Central and West Africa) and Oceania (New Guinea and Australia) to exchange knowledge, perspectives and methods for mental health research and service delivery. Around the world, Indigenous peoples have experienced marginalization, rapid culture change and absorption into a global economy with little regard for their needs or autonomy. -
Native American Communities on Health and Disability: Borderland Dialogues
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Publication Date: 2013This volume examines concepts of disability and wellness in Native American communities, prominently featuring the life's work of Dr. Carol Locust. Authors Locust and Lovern confront the difficulties of translating not only words but also entire concepts between Western and Indigenous cultures, and by increasing the cultural competency of those unfamiliar with Native American ways of being are able to bring readers from both cultures into a more equal dialogue. -
Native American health: Then and Now
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Publication Date: 2024This narrative delves into the health and healing practices of indigenous tribes across the United States prior to the arrival of settlers through to the present day. Focused on physical, social, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual well-being, the book traces each tribe's origins and their current locations, shedding light on their economic and social issues today.
