Seven specific health care issues -- cancer, diabetes, heart disease, oral health, adult and childhood immunizations, maternal/infant health, and HIV/AIDS -- are key topics at this week's Minority Health Disparities Summit in Tampa.

According to Dr. Emile Commedore, director of the state Office of Minority Health, Florida has made significant strides in reducing disparities, but many challenges remain. Lack of insurance is a particular problem. The 2004 Florida Health Insurance Study found that among persons younger than 65, 31 percent of Hispanics and 22 percent of blacks were uninsured, compared to 14.3 percent of whites. The cancer rate among non-white Floridians is 23 percent higher than among whites, and blacks account for more than half of all state residents with HIV.

Cervical cancer, on the decline nationally, continues to kill a disproportionate number of Florida minority women, said Susan Fleming, state cancer program administrator. "The incidence is similar [among different groups]. But when you look at a poor, less-educated population, the mortality rates are higher."

State figures show that black women are almost twice as likely to die of cervical cancer as white women. This is because non-white women are often diagnosed in late states of the cancer, said Youjie Huang, a chronic-disease epidemiologist with the state health department. Of 910 Florida women diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2005, 52 percent of blacks, 44 percent of whites, and 39 percent of Hispanics had already reached advanced stages of the disease.

Josephine Mercado, executive director of the Hispanic Health Initiative, called for more efforts to educate minority women about cervical cancer's link to the STD human papillomavirus and the protective effects of the vaccine Gardasil.

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