NHM Health Focus: National
Public Health Week
| Healthy People 2010: Quick Facts on Health Disparities
Compared to the white population:
African Americans
- experience a more than double infant mortality rate.
- have a 30 percent higher death rate for all cancers.
- are six times more likely to die from homicide.
- are more than seven times more likely to die
from HIV/AIDS.
Hispanics and Latinos
- are almost twice as likely to die from diabetes.
- accounted for 20 percent of new cases of
tuberculosis, despite only comprising 11 percent of
the population in 1996.
- have higher rates of blood pressure and obesity.
American Indians and Alaskan Natives
- experience diabetes rates that are more than twice as much.
- have disproportionately high death rates from
unintentional injuries and suicide.
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
- have higher rates of new cases of hepatitis and tuberculosis.
- demonstrate signs of being a healthy population, on average,
but exhibit great diversity within the population. For example,
Vietnamese American women suffer from cervical cancer at
nearly five times the rate of white women.
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April 2004: Each year the American Public Health Association
(APHA) joins with local and national public health groups to celebrate
the first week in April as National Public Health Week. The theme
for 2004 is eliminating health disparities and the goal is to remind us
all that the health of racial and ethnic minority populations still lags
far behind non-minority populations, despite major advances in public
health and medical science. We also know that some disparities exist for
non-minority populations.
As a National
Partner, the National Health Museum joins APHA
along with the Sponsors
and other National,
State/County
and Community
Partners of National Public Health Week in saluting
all the good work that’s being done across the country to address
the issue of health disparities.
Access Excellence @ the National Health Museum is part of the solution.
We encourage our Web site visitors to educate themselves about issues
connected to health disparities, improve health literacy, and share
innovate ideas from across the country that seek to eliminate health
disparities.
By working to bridge the gap between public health and museums and
science centers through the National
Public Health Partnership, the National Health Museum is joining
with APHA to mobilize its network of museums and science centers from
across the country to support National Public Health Week -- read
about how.
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