ABSTRACT
The term “health disparity” was first coined around 1990 (Braveman, 2014) and refers to “a particular type of health difference that is closely linked with social or economic disadvantage” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2008, p. 28). Health disparities adversely affect groups of people who have systematically experienced greater obstacles to health based on their race/ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, and similar factors. While it is clear that health disparities in the U.S. exist (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013), pinpointing the underlying reasons has been debated by social scientists, geneticists, bioethicists, and others. Since the early 1990s, and based on published literature, the essential variables of many of the health disparities models have included race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, and sex as underlying factors that help explain differences in morbidity and mortality outcomes (Williams, 1997).
