Children's health was in the spotlight during the recent Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities at Morehouse School of Medicine.  The session topic for the daylong event in January - "Investing in Children's Health: A Community Approach to Addressing Health Disparities."

The Satcher Health Leadership Institute co-hosted the session, in conjunction with the Healthcare Georgia Foundation and the Institute of Medicine's Board on Children, Youth and Families.

David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., director, Center of Excellence on Health Disparities and the Satcher Health Leadership Institute, and the 16^th U.S. Surgeon General, presented the keynote address. Satcher looked at the overarching goals of Healthy People 2010. He says, since the report's creation, "a lot of good things have happened in government and private sector," especially focusing on the quality of health care.

"You have to be encouraged by that. The bad news is the programs have not been adequately supported."

MSM President John E. Maupin Jr., D.D.S., welcomed visitors to the campus, and Dean and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Eve J. Higginbotham, M.D., provided the lunchtime address.

The presenters shed light on the link between early childhood life conditions and adult health; and aimed to create dialogue among stakeholders in community, academia, health care, business, policy and philanthropy.

Satcher also displayed a PowerPoint presentation examining "What if we had eliminated disparities in the last century?" He and George Rust, M.D., M.P.H., interim director of the National Center for Primary Care and professor of Family Medicine, worked with others on a chart showing, among other things, fewer black deaths in 2000. It also showed that 24,000 fewer deaths would have resulted from heart disease, 7,000 fewer from HIV/AIDS, 4,700 fewer infant deaths would have occurred, 20,000 fewer from diabetes, 2,000 fewer deaths of black women from breast cancer, and 2.5 million fewer blacks uninsured, including 620,000 children.

"In order to eliminate disparities in health, we must impact upon all of the determinants of health and we must do it in an interactive fashion," Satcher added. "We must care enough. We must know enough. We must be willing to do enough. We must persist in our efforts."