Trends in U.S. Public Awareness of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities

The proposed survey seeks to collect data for one of OMH's annual performance measures, approved by OMB in February 2007, following Office of Management and Budget (OMB)'s examination of OMH using the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). This measure is to ``increase awareness of[[Page 49675]]racial/ethnic health status and health care disparities in the general population.'' Findings from this data collection will enable OMH to track progress on this measure over time as mandated by OMB PART requirements. The lack of general awareness and understanding about the nature and extent of racial and ethnic health disparities in the U.S. and the impact that such disparities are having on the overall health of the Nation have been cited as a major barrier to the provision of programmatic, budgetary, and policy attention to these issues. Therefore, one of the long-term, annual measures agreed upon was to ``increase awareness of racial/ethnic health status and health care disparities in the general population.''