America boasts the most expensive health care system in the world, housing both cutting-edge medical training and scientific research. Still, the system is not immune from racial, ethnic and financial inequalities.
Saturday's Health Disparities and Higher Education Symposium brought these problems to light.
"I had spent some time in Zambia and in Kenya and Ghana on separate occasions doing stuff related to health," junior co-organizer Morissa Sobelson said at the event. "And it occurred to me that a lot of the same patterns we were seeing in these countries like Ghana, ...where there is an incredible gap between people that not only have access to health care but also have so many privileges and those that don't, are really going on in Boston, too."
The symposium began with an address from John Auerbach, Massachusetts' recently-appointed commissioner of public health.
Auerbach emphasized the importance of recognizing and tackling health disparities.
He also outlined the administration's plan to create an Office of Health Equity for this purpose. Governor Deval Patrick and the state legislature have already allocated $2 million for the first year, he said.
"There is overwhelming[ly] clear data that the problem with inequity and poorer health outcomes among the residents of Massachusetts and the country is a major public health crisis," Auerbach said. "To address this crisis, we have to think broadly about a wide array of different issues. Certainly, we in the public health world may focus on clinical and public health messages; but unless we think about such issues as housing, jobs and higher education, we really won't be able to close the gap."
Keynote speaker Joan Reede spoke about the importance of educating a section of the medical labor force about the health care disparities that need to be addressed.
The country is entering a period of crisis during which the pool of medical professionals is decreasing dramatically and students are becoming less interested in studying the sciences, said Reede, the dean for diversity and community partnership at Harvard's Medical School.
Reede emphasized the importance of long-term initiatives designed to solve the problem at a grassroots level.
"If you want to deal with issues of diversity, you have to be consistent," she said. "So this is not something that you do for a week or a month or five years and say, 'Is the problem over?' ... If you're going to be there, you need to be there; you need to build trust with the community."
With all this in mind, the speakers challenged students in attendance, stressing the importance of not just talking about the problem, but also actively pursuing a remedy.
"You are going to have to move outside of your comfort zone," said Elmer Freeman, the other keynote speaker and the executive director of the Boston-based Center for Community Health Education Research and Service.
"You cannot continue to look where the light is because you're looking for causes in all the wrong places. This is ultimately about poverty, access to care, environmental justice and racism," he said.
