THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
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For Immediate Release
November 22, 2000
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
Today, I am pleased to sign the Health Care Fairness Act into law.
This legislation provides long overdue attention to the dramatic
disparities in the incidence of disease and health care outcomes in
minorities as compared to the overall population. It is unacceptable that
African American men have a higher overall cancer incidence and infant
mortality rates than any other racial or ethnic group; Hispanic and Native
Americans suffer much greater rates of diabetes, and Asian American and
Pacific Islanders are afflicted with extraordinarily high levels of cancer
of the liver.
The legislation being enacted today authorizes over $150 million to
create a new national center for research on minority health and health
disparities at NIH; increases funding for research on race and health
disparities at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; and creates
a new program to attract health disparity researchers into this critically
important field. We must build on today?s achievement by assuring adequate
funding for these and other initiatives that will help close the health
status gap in this nation. It will make a major contribution toward
eliminating these disparities by 2010 -- a nationwide goal we established
over two years ago, and one which must be pursued with the same rigor with
which we have worked towards eliminating barriers to basic civil rights.
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