ABSTRACT
In a world where environmental hazards now play a major role in disease occurrence, environmental health indicators provide valuable markers for characterizing disease trends, delineating the spatial patterns, and comparing risks across regions. A few of these indicators were introduced earlier in Chapter 2, along with a discussion of their uses and applications in establishing population transition frameworks and evaluating disease burdens. This chapter goes a step further to examine these measures within the context of health disparities. The chapter begins with a clarification of the concepts and terminologies that are increasingly used in the literature to describe the differential health status of population groups. The growing disconnect between public awareness of these problems and their support for governmental intervention is also discussed along with research paradigms that seek to explain the underlying causes. In the last section, an overview of health disparities in the United States is presented, along with a recent national initiative to promote health parity and social justice.
