The researchers examined discharge records for 6,815 white and black adult patients at nearly 500 hospitals. They found wide age disparities for a range of acute and chronic health conditions including diabetes, pneumonia and high blood pressure.
After factoring in insurance and other variables, the research team led by Jeannette R. Ickovics found that blacks were hospitalized on average five and a half years earlier than their white peers suffering from the same maladies. Black adults were hospitalized an average of nine years earlier than whites for all health conditions combined.
The biggest differences were recorded in uncontrolled diabetes (a 12-year age disparity) and bacterial pneumonia (7.5 years). Of the dozen diseases measured, significant disparities were also found for hospitalization with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure and dehydration.
“While the younger age at hospitalization was not necessarily surprising, the magnitude of the difference was indeed surprising,” said Ickovics, a professor at the School of Public Health and director of the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE). “Consider the direct and indirect health and economic consequences of hospitalization for uncontrolled diabetes at age 46 for a black man compared to age 58 for a white man.”
While earlier studies isolated racial disparities in rates of hospitalization, health status, health-care access and disease burden, the Tale is believed to be the first to identify racial disparities in the age of adults at the time of hospitalization.
Lead author Katie Brooks Biello, a doctoral student at the School of Public Health, believes that preventive care for these conditions would reduce the need for hospitalizations. "Individuals who receive adequate and timely ambulatory care for conditions such as diabetes would not need to be hospitalized as early due to complications and a worsening in severity of these conditions,” she says. “A delay in hospitalizations would reduce social and economic burdens on individuals, families and society as a whole."
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