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Racial disparities in health in the United States are largely the result of long-standing structural determinants that are deeply embedded into our nation’s institutions, policies, and social norms. Race as a social construct influences people’s prospects for well-being before they are even born, with racial disparities in health persisting for centuries. Domestically, race is a bigger predictor of someone’s health outcomes than socioeconomic status, zip code, creed, or political leaning. The COVID-19 pandemic elucidated the existing barriers to health and how deleterious the consequences of unmitigated inequities were in populations with certain racial and/or ethnic identities. As such, data collection for public health resource allocation and intervention design should seek to uncover opportunities to tailor programming efforts that meet the needs of groups who have long been structurally underserved, neglected, and mismanaged. In a nation as diverse as the United States, collecting racial and ethnic demographic data without granularity can contribute to masking existing inequities and erasing the experiences of various subpopulations. While the Office of Management and Budget’s recent move to update the federal standards for collecting information on race and ethnicity has improved data collection for a few groups, this policy statement seeks to explore opportunities to enhance public health racial and ethnic data collection efforts for more meaningful and sustainable interventions that forge a path toward health equity.