Neighborhood-Level Chronic Disease Surveillance: Utility of Primary Care Electronic Health Records and Emergency Department Claims Data.

Context: Disease burden may vary substantively across neighborhoods in an urban setting. Yet, data available for monitoring chronic conditions at the neighborhood level are scarce. Large health care data sets have potential to complement population health surveillance.

Challenges and strategies for hypertension management: qualitative analysis of small primary care practices with varying blood pressure control.

Background: Electronic health record (EHR) data on blood pressure (BP) control among patients with hypertension show that practices' rates vary greatly. This suggests providers use different approaches in managing hypertension, and so we aimed to explore challenges small primary care practice providers face and strategies they use to manage patients' BP. We explored differences between providers with high and low BP control rates to help inform future quality improvement work.

Intersectionality of Race, Gender, and Common Mental Disorders in Northeastern Brazil.

This study applies the perspective of intersectionality, defined as social identities combining with one another and with structural societal factors to produce health inequities, to assess the interaction between race, gender, and common mental disorders (CMD) in northeastern Brazil. The Self-Reporting Questionnaire was used to assess CMD among a representative sample of adults in Feira de Santana, Bahia, Brazil (N=3273). Four groups (Black men, Black women, White women, White men) represented the intersection of race and gender.

Race/skin color and mental health disorders in Brazil: a systematic review of the literature.

Unlabelled: Mental health disorders contribute a significant burden to society. This systematic literature review aims to summarize the current state of the literature on race/skin color and mental health disorders in Brazil.

Methods: PubMed and Lilacs were searched using descriptors for mental health disorders (depression, anxiety, Common Mental Disorders, psychiatric morbidity, etc.

Relationship Between Chronic Conditions and Disability in African American Men and Women.

Background: Race differences in chronic conditions and disability are well established; however, little is known about the association between specific chronic conditions and disability in African Americans. This is important because African Americans have higher rates and earlier onset of both chronic conditions and disability than white Americans.

Methods: We examined the relationship between chronic conditions and disability in 602 African Americans aged 50 years and older in the Baltimore Study of Black Aging.

Racial disparities in disability among older adults: finding from the exploring health disparities in integrated communities study.

Objective: Persistent and consistently observed racial disparities in physical functioning likely stem from racial differences in social resources and environmental conditions.

Method: We examined the association between race and reported difficulty performing instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) in 347 African American (45.5%) and Whites aged 50 or above in the Exploring Health Disparities in Integrated Communities-Southwest Baltimore, Maryland Study (EHDIC-SWB).

Disentangling race and social context in understanding disparities in chronic conditions among men.

Disparities in men's health research may inaccurately attribute differences in chronic conditions to race rather than the different health risk exposures in which men live. This study sought to determine whether living in the same social environment attenuates race disparities in chronic conditions among men. This study compared survey data collected in 2003 from black and white men with similar incomes living in a racially integrated neighborhood of Baltimore to data from the 2003 National Health Interview Survey.

Racial disparities in hypertension awareness and management: are there differences among African Americans and Whites living under similar social conditions?

Objective: To examine the nature of disparities in hypertension awareness, treatment, and control within a sample of Whites and African Americans living in the same social context and with access to the same health care environment.

Design: Cross-sectional study

Setting: Southwest Baltimore, Maryland

Participants: 949 hypertensive African American and White adults in the Exploring Health Disparities in Integrated Communities-Southwest Baltimore (EHDIC-SWB) Study.

Main Outcome Measures: Hypertensive participants who reported having been diagnosed by a doctor were considered to be aware of their hypertension.