ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the intellectual barriers to better care for minorities, reviews health policy options, and deals with a possible agenda for action. Advances in science and technology, progress in understanding the linkages between health and socioeconomic status, and new knowledge about the cultural and environmental determinants of physical and mental disorders offer powerful tools to reach that goal. Demographic growth and greater political clout may induce public and private investments in data collection and analysis to extend the comparability of demographic, socioeconomic, and epidemiologic information on non-Hispanic whites to major Hispanic subgroups and other minorities. Area Health Education Centers have almost two decades of tradition in increasing the number and improving the distribution and quality of health professionals to underserved areas. In the area of Hispanic health, much of the stimulus and perseverance in promoting convergence of purposes must come from the Hispanic community.
