Health Equity Initiative

Research

The first step in advancing health equity is to paint a picture of conditions in Multnomah County today. With this information, we can begin to grapple with how to address the social conditions in which people live and work, in order to reduce health disparities.

Health Disparities in Multnomah County

Multnomah County Health Department evaluates and reports on the community’s health, including racial and ethnic health disparities. Detail about these disparities can be found in the following reports:

Health Impacts of Housing in Multnomah County: Feb 2009 (PDF).
Report on the relationship between health and housing, and the state of housing in Multnomah County.

Social Determinants of Health in Multnomah County: The Economy and Health, 2009 (PDF).
This report finds that poverty, the high cost of living, the growth in low wage jobs, and the income gap between the rich and the poor have worsened in Multnomah County over the past decade.

Report Card on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities: March 2008 (PDF).
Across 17 health indicators examined for all populations of color, six of the 28 health disparities that existed in the 1991-95 period had been eliminated by 2001-05. An additional 14 disparities had been reduced.

Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities in Multnomah County: 1990-2004 (PDF). Between 2000-2004, we identified 23 health disparities in Multnomah County.

Health Disparities in the U.S.

Regional and Racial Variation in Health Care Among Medicare Beneficiaries, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

This report from the Dartmouth Atlas Project builds on previous findings that showed differences in health care quality by race compounded by variations across state and hospital referral regions.

Black Male: Why the Mid South Cannot Afford to Ignore the Disparities Facing its Black Men and Boys, Foundation for the Mid South

Report on health disparities and socioeconomic factors affecting black men and boys in the mid South.

Updated December 2, 2009