This seminar series explores the history of health disparities, the successes and challenges faced by public health practitioners over the years, and the current trends in health disparities and health equity in Latvia, and the United States.
Attendees were offered the opportunity to learn the history of health disparities, to acquire a broad-based perspective on health equity, and to better understand the critical issues health disparities research, the literature, and application. This seminar series was organised in accordance with the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) dataset.
Lecturer
Courtney Queen (USA),
Fulbright Scholar to the RSU Faculty of Public Health and Social Welfare
Overview
17 February
Translational Health Disparities
Research & History of Health Disparities in USA & Latvia
- Defining and understanding health disparities;
- Recognising the complexity and multi-disciplinary aspect of health disparities; discussing emerging frameworks and concepts and their impact on health disparity measurements;
- Understanding health disparity databases and their application in tracking, detecting, understanding, reducing and eliminating health disparities.
3 March
The seminar was cancelled due to technical reasons.
Frameworks, Theories and Concepts
for Addressing Health Disparities
Describe various frameworks and theories for addressing health disparities, including:
Single-focused conceptual approaches based on consideration of healthcare, law and policy, biology, or social/environmental factors, and
Multi-focused conceptual approaches based on consideration of life course, human development and non-biological pathways.
10 March
Application of Data, Measurement Models, and Evaluation Methods
in Addressing Population Health and Health Disparities
- Describe the importance of data on race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, neighborhood effects, and other factors;
- Illustrate the use of quantitative and qualitative methodologies in health disparities research;
- Understand the concepts of grading population health and measuring health status; and
- Understand current issues in measurement, evaluation, and analysis and interpretation of data.
31 March
Social Determinants of Health & Health Equity
in USA & Latvia
- Understand current major theories on the social determinants in health and be familiar with recently described perspectives on the causal pathways that lead from social conditions to differential health outcomes.
7 April
Health Disparities Research in the United States:
Race and Ethnic Minority Populations
- Describe and understand the health disparities in racial/ethnic minority populations, with a focus on the social, economic, behavioral, and physical and environmental factors that underlie them, and
- Understand the role of prevention, early detection, screening and access to quality care.
28 April
Global Health Disparities
for Rural Populations, Child and Adolescent Health and Immigrant Health
- Describe and understand health problems experienced by rural populations, children and adolescents, and immigrant groups, and
- The social, economic, and cultural factors that influence the health status of these groups.
12 May
Using Large Scale Data for Disparities Research
- Understand health disparity databases and their application in tracking, detecting, understanding, reducing and eliminating health disparities.
- Describe the problem of health literacy in the US and Europe
- Understand how levels of health literacy are determined, consequences of low health literacy and
- Explore strategies for designing, implementing and disseminating tailored health information for patient groups/populations with different levels of literacy and different cultural backgrounds.
- Develop an understanding of cultural competency issues related to race, gender, class and other difference and explore the interconnectedness of identities across differences, critical consciousness and relationship to cultural competence.
- Scholar will be able to develop a framework for cultural competency within the context of one’s environment.
2 June
Translational Health Disparities
– The Intersection of Science, Practice and Policy
- Scholars will discuss and will have the chance to present their team case studies or framework.
- The challenge for scholars will be to build a framework or proposal that integrates multiple scientific, practice or policy models to create meaningful connections among different health disparity determinants (behavior, culture, SES, etc.) and domains (built environment, public health infrastructure, transportation, urban planning, etc.) and
- To better understand the ecosystem of influences on health disparities, the health of individuals and the health of populations.
