Lecture

Last night I went to a lecture at the United Way on "Social Determinants of Health vs. Social Determinates of Equity" by Dr. Camara Jones. While I refuse to jump on the guilty-white bandwagon, (possibly because I'm broke and without health insurance myself), her arguments and evidence were compelling. With both Native Americans and Hispanics, if they identified themselves by the ethnic group, but generally other people perceived them as white, their health-level was commensurate with the white population; while those who were usually perceived as Hispanic or Native American had lower levels of general health.

While her focus was on attacking some of the underlying "social determinates of equity" (in this case racism), it made me think about the continuing move not only towards taking responsibility for your own health education, but also the move towards making that information available electronically. As we push towards educated health consumers, are we inadvertently creating a system that will make it increasingly difficult for some segments of our population to become educated health consumers?