TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chandra,Amitabh
AU  - Skinner,Jonathan
TI  - Geography and Racial Health Disparities
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9513
PY  - 2003
Y2  - February 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9513
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9513.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Amitabh Chandra
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/496-7356
E-Mail: amitabh_chandra@harvard.edu

Jonathan S. Skinner
Department of Economics
6106 Rockefeller Hall
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755
Tel: 603/646-2535
Fax: 603/646-2122
E-Mail: jonathan.skinner@dartmouth.edu
AB  - An extensive literature has documented racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health care and health outcomes. We argue that the influence of geography in medical practice needs to be taken seriously for both the statistical measurement of racial disparities, and in designing reforms to reduce disparities. Past research has called attention to disparities that occur within hospitals or provider groups; for example black patients who are treated differently from whites within a hospital. We focus on a different mechanism for disparities; African-Americans tend to live in areas or seek care in regions where quality levels for all patients, black and white, are lower. Thus ensuring equal access to health care at the local or hospital level may not by itself erase overall health care disparities. However, reducing geographic disparities in both the quality of care, and the quality of health care decisions by patients, could have a first-order impact on improving racial disparities in health care and health outcomes.
ER  -