Race and/or ethnicity affect access to medical care for U.S. children with frequent ear infections, researchers say.

Researchers at University of California, Los Angeles, and Harvard Medical School in Boston say African-American and Hispanic children are at greater odds versus Caucasian children of not being able to afford prescription drugs and not being able to see a specialist.

The study, published in Otolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery, also found African-American and Hispanic children are more likely than white children to visit the emergency room for an ear infection.

“Our goal was to provide an accurate demographic picture of the United States so that we could identify disparities to target for intervention,” Dr. Nina Shapiro of Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA says in a statement.

“Clearly, we found that children of certain ethnicities who suffer from frequent ear infections are more likely to face greater barriers to care. This information provides an opportunity for improvements in our current health care reform.”

Shapiro, the study co-author, and colleagues pulled data on children whose parents reported more than three ear infections in the last year from the National Health Interview Survey - a large-scale, household-based 10-year survey of a statistically representative sample of the U.S. population.

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LOS ANGELES, Oct. 27 (UPI)