So You Want to Do Health Disparities Work: What's Next

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: Health disparities research has grown exponentially in recent years. However, due to the fact that this field is somewhat nascent, there are likely many who are interested in doing research but aren’t sure where to start. Health disparities are pervasive throughout medicine, including otolaryngology. Within otolaryngology, disparities have primarily focused on head and neck oncology. In head and neck cancer patients, survival, disease recurrence, and morbidity demonstrate an association with social determinants of health. However, other disparities exist within the field beyond patients with cancer.

Prior to 2009, there were 13 articles published that included the search terms “health+disparities+otolaryngology.” Since that time, more than 650 additional articles have been published representing the increased academic interest in this work. Some inherent limitations of this work include bias, lack of standardized models for comparison, and an incomplete vocabulary for defining health disparities.

This session will educate participants in the basics of health disparities research in otolaryngology, which can be of benefit to all Otolaryngologists, not only those with explicit interest in health disparities research. Additionally, findings from this work can ultimately be incorporated into institutional and hospital-wide quality improvement (QI) initiatives that can enhance outcomes, improve access and delivery of care, and decrease the cost of treatment. Strategies to engage in this type of work include adopting the necessary tools for performing high quality health disparity research, using the social vulnerability index and social vulnerability metric as social determinants of health; utilizing large data sets to better characterize inequity in healthcare; reflecting on which practitioners should be engaging in health disparities work; and understanding the ethics of such research. This panel aims to make health disparities work accessible to a new generation of academic otolaryngologists who have an interest in addressing the healthcare needs of all.