A new report from the Connecticut Health Foundation has faulted the state for its lack of a standardized method of gathering data from medical facilities that identify patients by race, ethnicity and preferred language.
The report, “A Roadmap for Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data Collection and Use in Connecticut,” noted that a disproportionate impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the state”™s Black and Hispanic populations put a new focus on “inequities that existed before the virus and have long resulted in poorer health outcomes for people of color.”
The report also noted the lack of standardized data “can be particularly challenging for ethnic or racial groups with smaller populations, including Asian Americans and Native Americans, whose population-level outcomes are often not even reported in public health data.”
Furthermore, the report said that other states have already instituted standardized data collection that affirmed concerns of inequity in health care. Examples cited in the report included Minnesota”™s ability to bridge the gaps in colorectal cancer screenings and mammography rates between Black and White patients, and the discovery that Black and Hispanic patients with heart failure were less likely to be admitted to cardiology care compared to White patients.
“We can”™t address what we don”™t measure,” said Tiffany Donelson, president and CEO of the Connecticut Health Foundation. “Having reliable, self-reported data is critical to identifying problems and developing interventions that can benefit everyone.”
