Health and mortality rates in the US continue to be stratified by race and ethnicity (Williams, 2012). For example, African-Americans continue to live shorter lives and have higher rates of infant mortality and death from a range of causes when compared to White people (Williams, 2012). Closing these gaps has been a long-standing goal of health officials (Geiger, 2005; Bleich et al, 2013). As the US becomes more diverse, tracking racial health disparities will require engaging a more complex set of racial identities, including multiracial Americans.

The population identifying with multiple races has expanded dramatically, providing new opportunities, as well as challenges, in measuring racial disparities in health conditions and crafting effective health policy to address those gaps. As noted in previous chapters, relative to 2000, the number of US residents selecting multiple races has grown 32%, to over 9 million people, or 2.9% of the population (Jones and Bullock, 2012). What is this group's health profile and how does it differ from monoracial groups? Do multiracial Americans face unique health challenges or are their patterns essentially reflective of their component monoracial groups? Should the health experiences of multiracial people be included among larger monoracial groups with whom they may identify most closely (Bratter and Gorman, 2011), or should they be treated as a unique stand-alone group (or multiple groups, depending on their particular racial backgrounds) (Chavez and Sanchez, 2010)?

In this chapter, we bring multiracial people into the discussion of policies concerning racial health disparities by addressing four issues. First, we provide a brief overview of the work on the health of multiracial populations, including the types of health challenges noted and the gaps in research on this topic. Second, we provide an analysis of nationally representative data on the health of multiracial adults, a subgroup usually absent in studies. Third, we turn to health policies that target the reduction of health disparities and ask how such policies, in light of what we have uncovered, can best speak to the health needs of multiracial groups. Fourth, we argue that more and broader data must be collected on multiracial people in order to effectively measure and address racial health disparities.