Disparities in Diabetes Care
Healthcare disparities and inequality are concepts that reflect aspects of differential healthcare access, disease and symptom management, and healthcare outcomes. Health inequalities can be defined as the “preventable, unfair and unjust differences in health status between groups, populations, or individuals that arise from the unequal distribution of social, environmental, and economic conditions within societies, which determine the risk of people getting ill, their ability to prevent sickness, or opportunities to take action and access treatment when ill health occurs.”1 Historically, disparities purely referred to a difference of some kind but, in recent years, the term has come to be synonymous with unfairness and inequality.