Taking the measure of health care disparities.

Despite growing public and private efforts to reduce disparities in health care, these disparities persist in the United States. Soon after the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Unequal Treatmentreport systematically documented disparities in multiple components of the health care system (Smedley, Stith and Nelson 2003), Congress mandated the Agency for healthcare Research and Quality to m onitor national trends in health care disparities through the annual National Healthcare Disparities Report (Agency for healthcare Research and Quality 2011). For health services researchers and policy makers, numerous methodological challenges have arisen in identifying dosparities in health care, tracking them over time, understanding their underlying mechanisms, and evaluating the effects of practices and policies to reduce them. (June 2012)