What is National Minority Health Month?

Apr 3

Written by Madison Woods, an undergraduate student at UNCW and a Public Health Intern at Going Beyond the Pink.

What is National Minority Health Month and Why is it Important?

The month of April is dedicated to commemorating National Minority Health Month. This is dedicated to raising awareness and having an inclusive initiative that addresses the health disparities of minorities such as African Americans, Hispanics, Asains/Asian Americans, Native Americans and other minorities. The goal is to raise awareness and strengthen the ability of communities to overcome the disproportionate burden of preventable disease and premature death through accessible prevention, early detection/screenings and control of disease complications. Each year there is a new theme to focus on different aspects of better healthcare for minorities and this year is “Better Health Through Better Understanding”. This means there is a focus on improving health outcomes, which are things like death rates, life expectancy and quality of life, for racial and ethnic minorities by providing them with culturally and linguistically appropriate information that allows them to be empowered to make informed decisions about their health.Raising awareness for topics of health literacy is extremely important because many people most likely aren’t even aware there is an issue in the first place. It is estimated that only around 14% of the population in the US has proficient health literacy.

History of National Minority Health Month

This dates back to 1915, when a Black leader and educator, Booker T Washington began National Health Improvement Week. This was later known as National Negro Health Week (NNHW) and originally had the purpose in recognizing that progress for black people couldn’t happen until the high rates of illness and death among this community were addressed. NNHW also had the goal of drawing attention to how bad the working and living conditions were for African Americans, that was ultimately causing many health issues and increasing the health disparities.The main focuses in the beginning were around the awareness of community issues, cleanliness, food safety and school health. NNHW was recognized until 1951 and was a great foundation for many health-focused observances we currently celebrate. Later in April of 2001, the National Minority Health Month Foundation launched NNHW in response to the Department of Health and Human Services Healthy People 2010 health promotion initiative. Ever since then, this month has been observed to continue improving health outcomes and reducing health disparities of minority populations.