Health disparities refer to differences between groups of people. These differences can affect how frequently a disease affects a group, how many people get sick, or how often the disease causes death.
Many different populations are affected by disparities. These include
Source: National Cancer Institute (NIH)
Content: Includes citations to millions of biomedical journal articles, as well as some books, book chapters, and reports.
Purpose: An essential database for biomedical and health topics
Special Features: Includes MeSH search functionality
Provides citations and summaries of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, all in psychology and related disciplines, dating as far back as the 1800s. 99 percent of the covered material is peer-reviewed. The database also includes information about the psychological aspects of related fields such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business, law, and others. Journal coverage, which spans 1887 to present, includes international material selected from nearly 2 000 periodicals in more than 25 languages. Can limit by publisher, publication year, publication status, publication type, document type, book type, peer reviewed, language, population group, age group, intended audience, methodology and classification codes.
Take the time to consider carefully the subject of your literature search.
BE SPECIFIC when choosing topical words for your disparity.
You may need to do some preliminary research to learn more about the topic so that you can understand which concepts are significant to your question.
Search with subject headings rather than keywords when applicable headings are available.
**Medical Subject Headings are ideal search terms for this part of your Disparities Search because there can be much variant terminology used to describe specific population groups,
For racial/ethnic population groups, consider headings included here:
For populations defined by geographic location such as region, state, particular city, consider headings included here:
For populations defined by socioeconomic status, consider headings like these:
Limit your PubMed search retrieval to articles discussing particular age groups using these strategies:
Use the filter options to limit your retrieval to articles discussing a specific sex:
Search "disparity" as a topical concept in itself.
Try this search string:
disparit* OR inequit* OR inequalit*
Other keywords to consider:
Some MeSH headings to consider: (only used on records 2008-current)
Try this "canned" search strategy!
Searching specifically for studies of interventions addressing health/healthcare disparities is difficult.
Authors use many words to describe the particular interventions being tested.
Try this simple search string for a start:
intervention OR program
Some other keywords to consider:
Some Medical Subject Headings to consider:
Consider limiting to Publication Characteristics (such as Clinical Trial, Controlled Study, etc.) using Article Types Filter Options.
Try the "Clinical Study Categories" search in PubMed Clinical Queries to retrieve studies using high quality research methodologies: