Sullivan Renews Minority Health Care Promise : Policy: The HHS chief says the goal is to increase the supply of physicians and access to medical services in underserved urban and rural areas.

Striving to focus attention on the Bush Administration’s urban and minority programs, Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan Friday renewed a government pledge to try to end disparities between black and white Americans’ access to health care.

“Despite unprecedented advances in scientific knowledge and medical technology, (minorities) suffer disproportionate rates of death and disability,” Sullivan said in a speech at New York University Medical School. A copy of the secretary’s text was made available here.

President Bush’s fiscal 1993 budget request has designated an additional $155 million to attack the problem, he said.

The Bush Administration hopes to increase the supply of physicians and access to health care services in medically underserved urban and rural areas, he said, and to encourage early preventive care for children, including immunizations and health screenings.

The Administration also plans to focus on improving the health of children as a means of enhancing their ability to learn and to increase research and education to prevent complications from hypertension, a major killer of blacks, he said.

His remarks were greeted with skepticism by some groups.

“Secretary Sullivan is aware of the problems but the Administration has just not yet proposed anything comprehensive enough to address them,” said Marilyn Moon, a health economist with the Urban Institute.

“All along, Dr. Sullivan’s approach has been for people to take responsibility for their own health through their lifestyle choices,” she added. “This is fine, and really important, but let’s not blame the victim. Black Americans and low-income Americans just don’t have access to health care and other related services that they need and nothing this Administration has proposed will solve that. It’s just not enough.”

Sullivan said that the proposals also aim to increase the number of minorities in the health care professions and encourage them to practice in minority communities.

“Minority health professionals are typically more interested and more willing” to practice in medically underserved areas, he said. “Research shows that black physicians serve a higher proportion of minority patients in their practices than white physicians.”

“The paucity of minorities studying for and working in the health professions is, indeed, a crisis of national concern,” he said. By increasing their numbers, “we will be able to bridge cultural differences between practitioners and patients.”

Among the proposals to address this is a 20% increase in funding for the National Health Service Corps, to $120 million, for more training of physicians willing to serve in areas of need, he said.

An additional $11 million will be used “to increase the recruitment, placement and retention” of health care providers, with a particular emphasis on those who are minorities, he said.