Approaches to eliminating sociocultural disparities in health

The recent flurry of studies documenting the presence of racial, ethnic, an d socioeconomic disparities in health care and health have outpaced article s that describe effective strategies to eliminate disparities. Through lite rature review and informal interviews with research, policy, and program ex perts, we developed a framework of grograms that address disparities throug h targeting clinicians, patients and communities, and health systems. We fo und that the lack of technical expertise, resources, and sensitive tools ar e all common barriers to evaluating programs. To stimulate more effective p rograms and rigorous evaluations, we describe specialized implementation an d evaluation techniques programs can use, and make recommendations for futu re efforts.