What will it take to close the racial and ethnic health disparities gap? A conversation with Michael E. Bird, Reed Tuckson, and Marilyn Aguirre-Molina.

In the United States, the health of a community is often times determined by poverty and race. As the nation becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, new directives and approaches must be taken to improve health outcomes of minority and underserved communities. Three leading experts in racial and ethnic health share their perspectives regarding where we are and where we need to be in addressing health disparities. Michael E. Bird, MSW, MPH, Reed Tuckson, MPH, and Marilyn Aguirre-Molina, EdD, offer transdisciplinary-focused recommendations that encompass disease prevention, health care, and community mobilization.

Historical and current policy efforts to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities in the United States: future opportunities for public health education research.

In the summer of 2005, the Society for Public Health Education convened a meeting, Health Disparities and Social Inequities, with the task of setting the minority health disparities research agenda for public health educators. The article provides a history of minority health efforts beginning with the Negro Health Improvement Week in 1915 and an overview of National Institutes of Health's (NIH) current 5-year strategic research plan to eliminate health disparities. The plan's goals represent a significant investment in minority health research and the emergence of NIH as the leading federal agency funding health disparity research. Understanding the history of minority health efforts and current health disparity research offers a perspective that will help guide public health educators in reaching the Healthy People 2010 goal of eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities.

Molecular epidemiology of tuberculosis in a low- to moderate-incidence state: are contact investigations enough?

To assess the circumstances of recent transmission of tuberculosis (TB) (progression to active disease <2 years after infection), we obtained DNA fingerprints for 1172 (99%) of 1179 Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates collected from Maryland TB patients from 1996 to 2000. We also reviewed medical records and interviewed patients with genetically matching M. tuberculosis strains to identify epidemiologic links (cluster investigation). Traditional settings for transmission were defined as households or close relatives and friends; all other settings were considered nontraditional. Of 436 clustered patients, 115 had recently acquired TB. Cluster investigations were significantly more likely than contact investigations to identify patients who recently acquired TB in nontraditional settings (33/42 vs. 23/72, respectively; p<0.001). Transmission from a foreign-born person to a U.S.-born person was rare and occurred mainly in public settings. The time from symptom onset to diagnosis was twice as long for transmitters as for nontransmitters (16.8 vs. 8.5 weeks, respectively; p<0.01). Molecular epidemiologic studies showed that reducing diagnostic delays can prevent TB transmission in nontraditional settings, which elude contact investigations.