Science / Medicine : Infant Mortality Reports Flawed

Infant mortality among some minorities is far higher than U.S. health records indicate because of errors and inconsistencies in the way race is reported, government researchers said last week. “There were indications these discrepancies existed, but the magnitude is startling,” said epidemiologist Robert A. Hahn of the federal Centers for Disease Control.

The study of birth and death records of babies in the mid-1980s found that when a discrepancy existed between a baby’s racial classification on a birth certificate and a death certificate, usually it resulted from a baby being identified as nonwhite at birth and as white at death. As a result, infant mortality was slightly overstated among whites but underestimated by 79% among Filipino-Americans, 49% among Japanese-Americans and 47% among American Indians, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

One of the nation’s prime health aims, spelled out by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department last year, is to reduce health differences among racial and ethnic groups.