Eliminating the mortality gap between whites and African Americans could save more than 83,000 lives annually, according to a just-released study.

Survival has improved for both groups since 1960, study co-author Dr. Adewale Troutman, director of the Louisville (Kentucky) Metro Health Department, told a briefing sponsored by the policy journal Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“However, there has been little improvement in the mortality gap,” he said. In fact, the gap actually got worse for African-American infants and men over age 35.

As a result, according to the study - whose lead author is former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher - in 2002, “blacks suffered 40.5 percent more deaths (83,750) than would be expected if they had experienced the mortality rate of whites.”

But disparities in health care are not limited to African Americans, noted Dr. Brian Smedley, study director for a landmark report issued 3 years ago by the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine. In the United States, said Smedley, people of color generally “receive lower quality care, even when they are seen in the same health system with the same insurance and present with the same symptoms.”

Aides to key lawmakers said they are optimistic that Congress will act in the next year or two to try to close some of the gap. While Democrats and Republicans introduced separate bills on the subject in the last Congress, “there are many, many more areas that we agree on than we disagree on,” said Dean Rosen, health policy director to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

Dora Hughes, deputy director for health for Sen. Edward Kennedy, said lawmakers will likely pay more attention to the health disparities issue as minority populations become more important voting blocs. “Members of Congress are going to have to address those constituencies,” she said.

SOURCE: Health Affairs, March-April 2005.