RESUMO
The 2003 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care (National Research Council, 2003) provides, through comprehensive reviews, strong evidence of health disparities in healthcare in the USA. In the article entitled 'A life course perspective on how racism may be related to health inequities', the authors cite the IOM study, in addition to numerous other studies that demonstrate racism's contribution to health disparities, and describe a number of approaches that have been adopted in an attempt to at best eliminate, and otherwise at least diminish, these disparities. In this paper the authors propose a new approach to the study of health inequities which uses a life-course structure that can be helpful in future health disparities research. This structure has the potential to create new and more comprehensive solutions. They also provide an extensive literature review of various approaches taken to combat racialised inequality, and these form a foundation on which to base further study.
