Report exposes harmful racial bias in healthcare delivery

THE REPORT of the Commission to End Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities has the potential to bring healthcare to a new level ("Track data on health and race, state told," Page B3, Aug. 9). The collaboration of academic, clinical, and legislative experts courageously identifies our tolerance for racism as the root cause of myriad health inequities.

Data on ethnic and racial disparities have been available for some time, but the problems persist. Health differences have been historically attributed to income, insurance, and lifestyle. Yet members of certain ethnic and racial groups receive substandard care even when they are working, insured, and have the ability to pay. These inequities result in increased morbidity and mortality among infants, asthmatics, surgical patients, diabetics, and those with heart disease. Not surprisingly, they are common in mental health, where such patients receive improper medicines, inadequate treatments, and fragmented care more frequently than do white patients.

More than the usual diversity training will be needed to correct these atrocities. Senator Dianne Wilkerson, Representative Peter Koutoujian, and their Joint Committee on Public Health deserve credit for bringing this critical information forward again and for positioning this hydra of a problem in the proper social context.

NICHOLAS A. COVINO
West Roxbury

The writer is president of the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology