Center in the News

"One thing we need to do right away is to target who was experiencing this the worst,” Mays said. “We need to decisions made at the state, the federal level, about what is acceptable quality data, meaning you cannot send a form in if it is missing certain variables.”

While there are state and national standards for reporting disease mortality, not every data center receives information at the same time and not all of it is complete, according to Vickie Mays, professor of psychology in the UCLA College and of health policy and management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

"You're more likely to see in racial and ethnic minorities that the kind of insurers near the end of their life are going to be a function of the type of employment and resources they had earlier in their life,"" Mays said. Examples include past employment that paid hourly wages and didn't offer benefits, or not being able to buy long-term care insurance.

""At the end of their lives and when they are utilizing these care facilities, those earlier inequities get played out again later in what it is that they have access to,"" Mays explained.