Boston Mayor Thomas Menino on Thursday announced a plan designed to address the city's racial and ethnic disparities in health care, which health officials regard as the city's most "pressing medical issue," the... Boston Globe reports. The city's campaign will provide $1 million in grants to pay for hospitals to begin tracking ethnic and racial differences in care delivery and underwrite cultural sensitivity training for physicians. The city's initiative also calls on hospitals to diversify their staffs and collaborate with religious groups and community coalitions that work in black, Latino and Asian communities. The $1 million initiative will be funded partially by grants from foundations, health care providers and the city. The plan follows the release of the city's "most detailed analysis of health care disparities," according to the Globe. The study found that black men in Boston die on average five years sooner than white men and are twice as likely to die from diabetes and four times as likely to die from AIDS-related complications. Latinos and Asians also have poorer health than whites but to a lesser extent than blacks. "We live in a city that is literally the medical center of the world," Menino said. He added, "There's no reason why blacks and Latinos in this city should have worse health than our white citizens. I look at the data, and I'm shocked by the differences." Arnold Epstein, chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, said, "The way to walk 100 miles is one step at a time, and this is an important step in the right direction," adding, "But there's likely to be no single pressure point where we can say, ...'We've made this go away'" (Smith, Boston Globe, 6/23).

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