Jon L. Christensen: “this past weekend Members of the Black, Hispanic and Asian Pacific Islander caucuses met in Chicago to review the status…”

“this past weekend Members of the Black, Hispanic and Asian Pacific Islander caucuses met in Chicago to review the status of health in communities of color there and discuss policy and legislative remedies. On the weekend before that, the Congressional Black Caucus held a brain trust, held similar meetings in Cleveland, Ohio. Both meetings, like the ones we have held in L.A., Miami, Newark, Charleston, and the U.S. Virgin Island were opportunities to talk to our wider constituencies, particularly people of color in this country, about their health care, or lack of it, their needs and what they think we, their Members of Congress and our colleagues, should be doing about it. Mr. Speaker, all of the places we visited are communities in which African Americans in particular, but all people of color, suffer disproportionately from disease and disabilities and die prematurely from preventable causes in numbers which are far in excess of our white counterparts. They are the health disparities that we have repeatedly come to the floor to talk about. Some examples are as follows: American Indian/ Alaskan natives have diabetes rates that are nearly three times higher than the overall rate. The death rate from asthma is more than three times higher among African Americans than among whites. The infant mortality rate for African Americans and American Indian and Alaskan Natives are more than two times higher.…”