Health is an important issue facing the Latino community. Recent studies such as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Status have shown a significant health disparity between Latinos/Hispanics and Whites. For example, their findings report that the prevalence of diabetes is nearly 100 percent higher among Hispanics than among whites, Hispanics Americans aged 65 years and older were less likely than whites to report having received influenza and pneumococcal vaccines, and Puerto Rican infants have higher death rates than white infants.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys reveals the following statistics:
- About 30 percent of Hispanic lack a usual source of health care compared with less than 16 percent of whites.
- Hispanic children are nearly three times as likely as non-Hispanic white children to have no usual source of health care.
- Hispanic Americans are far more likely to rely on hospitals or clinics for their usual source of care than are white Americans (13 percent v. 8 percent).