Populations of Color in Tennessee: Health Status Report

In 1985, Secretary Margaret Heckler of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued the Report of the Secretary’s Task Force on Black and Minority Health. That landmark report – which detailed the excess mortality among blacks in America from major health conditions - became the hallmark for our nation’s rising awareness of, and distress regarding, the alarming disparities that characterized the health status of racial and ethnic minorities. Many initiatives were birthed, including here in Tennessee, to address those health disparities; disparities often even more glaring in The South. The Black Health Care Task Force of the Tennessee Department of Health was succeeded by one of the nation’s earliest Offices of Minority Health, as we wrestled with innovative, holistic, and specific approaches to improving the health outcomes of populations of color in Tennessee. Recently, health and healthcare leaders in both the public and private sectors assembled in Washington, D.C., to review the health of minorities in America – 20 years after the Heckler Report, and at the mid-point of the ten-year health agenda targeted by Healthy People 2010. To a significant extent, thanks to then Surgeon General David Satcher, M.D., one of the overarching goals of Healthy People 2010 is the elimination of health disparities in our minority populations. In the context of such interim assessments, and in concert with the efforts of our Office of Minority Health in the Tennessee Department of Health, we present this report; the second such report in the last 10 years which exclusively focuses on the health of our state’s people of color. Our first report, Narrowing the Gap, was published in 1997