Perceptions of Racial and Ethnic Differences in Access to Healthcare

Abstract

Interest in racial and ethnic differences in health and healthcare during the past 15 years has tended to focus, with growing sophistication, on differences in procedure use, referrals, and health outcomes. This research has been accompanied by studies of communication in provider-patient relationships and, more recently, an increasing interest in patients’ and physicians’ perceptions of barriers to high-quality healthcare for different racial and ethnic groups. In this commentary, we briefly review some recent studies of perceptions of barriers to care. We focus especially on our group’s recent research in Durham County as a way of highlighting the importance of focusing on the experiences of local communities in studies of barriers to care.