African-Americans and Hispanics need access to more residential addiction treatment if improvements are to be made in outcomes among these populations, experts say.

Medical News Today reported Oct. 25 that while blacks and Hispanics have rates of heavy drinking, binge drinking and alcohol dependence that are the same or lower than those of white Americans, their treatment outcomes are poorer and they suffer greater health and social problems as a result of drinking.

Part of the reason may be that blacks and Hispanics are less likely to be enrolled in residential treatment programs, despite their more serious alcohol-abuse characteristics.

"We calculated that if African American patients were assigned to residential treatment at the same rate as white patients, the racial disparity in alcohol-treatment completion might decline by as much as 20 percent between African Americans and whites," said researcher Ricky N. Bluthenthal of the RAND Corporation. The same also would be true of Hispanics, he said, even though there is less disparity between their treatment-success rates and those of white patients.

"Because it is so much harder for a minority person to get into treatment, only the most persistent, motivated people are likely to get into care," said Laura A. Schmidt of the University of California at San Francisco's School of Medicine. "Thus, we would expect that minorities in treatment have higher completion rates and greater success in treatment than comparable minorities. What Dr. Bluthenthal and colleagues are showing is that, despite all this, minorities are less likely than whites to stay in treatment, other factors being equal."

Bluthenthal recommended that patients with higher alcohol-abuse severity be routinely assigned to residential treatment. "My research shows that the most severely affected minorities are the least likely to receive treatment," he said. "When they do get treatment, it is in less intensive settings, and now we see from this report, for a shorter duration of time. Despite all this, minorities who drink at the same levels as whites will experience higher rates of alcohol-related harm. Therefore, the need for treatment is greater in minority communities and yet the care is diminished on multiple levels."

The study was published in the November 2007 issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.