The author spent a year in the US on a Harkness Fellowship in healthcare policy. This included a series of organisational case studies examining interventions to reduce health care disparities. He outlines US attempts to develop policy aimed at eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare in order to identify policy lessons for New Zealand. The author finds that these efforts are at an early stage in the US and are often aligned with general quality improvements. Despite this, there are a number of valuable lessons to be learned for New Zealand.
