Monitoring Health Disparities to Prevent Disease

A CDC-sponsored special issue of the American Journal of Public Health, Monitoring Disparities in Prevention and Treatment of HIV, Viral Hepatitis, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and TuberculosisExit Disclaimer, is now available. All the articles in this supplement are free to access and downloadExit Disclaimer.

This supplement presents emerging and best-available methods, metrics, and indicators for monitoring health disparities and preventing HIV, viral hepatitis, STDs, and TB. The authors examined health disparities related to age, sex, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, geographic location, and nativity and how these factors affect health outcomes in HIV, hepatitis B virus, syphilis, and TB infections, as well as youth risk behaviors. Together, these articles provide a broad view of disease trends and analytical methods for monitoring health disparities and disease prevention.

We hope this issue encourages greater consideration of the available methods used for monitoring health disparities and helps advance the scientific field of measuring disparities in HIV, viral hepatitis, STDs, and TB.  The use of better metrics, methods, and indicators of progress can help inform our work to reduce, and ultimately, eliminate health disparities for these diseases in the United States.