Disparities in access to, delivery of, and outcomes following medical care have long been widely reported in the general medical literature. However, only in the more recent past have disparities been a focus of rigorous academic work within medical subspecialties, particularly surgical subspecialties. Debraj “Raj” Mukherjee, MD, MPH, presents a susrvey of recent work within neurosurgical literature that highlights demonstrated dispairites in the field by race, gender, insurance, and socioeconomic status. Use of the Area Deprivation Index will be discussed as a possible novel metric to help quantify neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantages and to possibly guide future interventions.
Mukherjee is the Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar in the Department of Population Health Sciences in the School of Medicine and Public Health.