Clarence Jones, a MCH graduate student and director of community outreach at Southside Community Health Services, recently took part in a forum on minority health sponsored by the University of Minnesota’s Program in Health Disparities Research.

As Jones noted, the need for organ donation among minorities is high. Certain diseases that can cause organ failure are more prevalent among minority communities (for example,  Hispanics are three times more likely to suffer from kidney disease than their white counterparts). Transplantation, moreover, is often more successful when organs are matched between members of the same ethnic group.

To learn more about U of M’s Program in Health Disparities Research, check out the Connection, an online newsletter available here: http://www.med.umn.edu/ccr/hdresearch/newsletter/home.html

For more on organ donation among minority groups, check out the the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Minority Health: http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/templates/browse.aspx?lvl=3&lvlid=12.