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Racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare
Racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare
Racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare
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My most humbling experience was volunteering as a patient ambassador for the East Harlem Health Outreach Program at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The program allows for Latinos of East Harlem to receive medical services for free or discounted. The duties of a patient ambassador are to help navigate patients to their appointment and answer any questions about their visit. All of the patients that I escorted were Latinos and some were Spanish speaking only. This experience made me think about the barriers of health within the Latino community. The two most common barriers of health that I observed within the Latino population are language and lack of insurance. As a person who does not speak Spanish, communicating effectively with
some patients was difficult. I have witnessed people who were not patients of the program have a difficulty in communicating and navigating the hospital. I imagine that patients with a language barrier have more negative health outcomes compared to Latino patients who can speak English. Thinking about Latino barriers of health made me realize how people take normal everyday implicit things like language for granted.
The Susan G. Komen Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating breast cancer, suffered a PR disaster four years ago and has yet to recover from the bad press of this unpopular decision. In 2012, the Susan G. Komen Foundation decided to end their financial support of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of family reproductive services (including abortion). This action resulted in an immediate public backlash and ignited a fierce political debate. In the middle of this controversy, the New York Times published an article in which women who had previously participated in the Susan G. Komen cancer walk were asked their opinion of the decision to cut Planned Parenthood funding. Sarah Robertson, who completed the 39.3-mile walk last year stated “I personally wouldn’t walk for Komen,” citing the
YMCA Community Action Program (Y-CAP) The YMCA The YMCA is a leading nonprofit organization for youth development, healthy living and social responsibility. The YMCA, also known as the Y, is a nonprofit like no other. This is because in 10,000 neighborhoods across the nation, Y-CAP has the presence and partnerships to promise and deliver a positive change.
Ideas of community, social progress, and culture are an ever-evolving social work issue. How do we as social workers choose to approach needs of groups and communities at the macro level? In order to grasp an understanding of true helping systems it is important for one to have a range of knowledge to justly participate within the formal helping structures an models that comprise of the social work field. In attempt to create our identity as active justice based social workers it is essential for one to conceptualize the framework of intersectionality. According to Kirsten-Ashmen, “Intersectionality involves the idea that people are complex and can belong to multiple, overlapping diverse groups “The intersectional perspective acknowledge the breath of the human experience, instead of conceptualizing social relationships and identities separately in terms of either race or class or gender or age or sexual orientation”; rather an intersectional approach focuses on the “interactional affects” of belonging to multiple groups (p. 48).” In order to remain committed to intersectionality I will apply theories and models to a progressing community in the city of Boston. A critical analysis of the strengths and weakness within each theory related to the specific community will be discussed. I will expose the intersecting layers, allowing for identity development through the lens of the macro social worker. I will begin by discussing my experience through the research process with my team members. After giving a detailed description of the project we can further explore the empowerment theory and systems theory to better explain the development of Dudley Street. The two theories are able to give an understanding of Roxbury’s forward progre...
I believe that every citizen deserves good healthcare services regardless of his or her geographical area, income, or race. An underserved community is a community in which people are unable to obtain health care or have limited access to the health care system for different of reasons. These reasons include ethnic background, socioeconomic variables, lower salary in some areas, extreme weather, or other life circumstances that produces an uneven distribution of healthcare resources, including nurses. The individuals in underserved communities lack affordable comprehensive health insurance, have gaps in insurance, or are living in remote areas and unable to access care. Additionally, the lack of basic necessities such as money for food, medications,
The increase and changing demography in the United State today, with the disparities in the health status of people from different cultural backgrounds has been a challenge for health care professionals to consider cultural diversity as a priority. It is impossible for nurses and other healthcare professionals to learn and understand theses diversity in culture, but using other approaches like an interpreter is very helpful for both nurses and patients. In this paper of a culturally appropriate care planning, I will be discussing on the Hispanic American culture because, I had come across a lot of them in my career as a nurse. The Hispanic are very diverse in terms of communication and communities and include countries like Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, South and Central America, and some of them speak and write English very well, some speaks but can’t write while some can’t communicate in English at all but Spanish.
According to Penner et al. (2013), there are various causes of healthcare disparities, such as socioeconomic status; this results to poor healthcare services for people with low socioeconomic status, as people with low pay find it difficult to leave their work to seek healthcare help, or to afford healthcare insurance (p.4). The second cause is language proficiency. The language barriers faced by the immigrant plays a role in the healthcare disparities among the racial or ethnic minority patients. Another cause is health literacy. The levels of the health literacy among the foreign born individuals can be influenced by their higher level of distrust of the healthcare providers and healthcare system than they have towards Caucasian people. This, in turn, leads them to seek healthcare information less often than their Caucasian counterparts, thus hindering the provision of quality services, as well as limiting the foreign patients’ ability to manage their health conditions effectively. The foreigners’ failure to easily accept the information provided to them by healthcare providers puts them at risk. Disentangling the role of health literacy in racial healthcare disparities from the effects of racial attitudes and beliefs is often hard (Penner et al,
The goal of this lesson is to explore how we can improve communication to eliminate language barriers between healthcare providers and patients in our organization and to establish culturally and linguistically appropriate goals, that provide safe, equal, and quality care to all our clients regardless of race, ethnic, or socioeconomic status. At the end of this lesson we should be
I chose to do my service learning project at Feed My Starving Children. I chose this service learning project because I had prior knowledge and experience by doing it with my family and church. Feed My Starving Children has been a huge impact to those who have participated in this service experience because their mission is to pack meals that go to very hungry children around the world. Being from a single parent family, it is hard for us to not be concerned about where the money for food is coming from, yet we have food on our tables for everyday meals. Therefore, I can’t imagine what it is like for those who experience hunger.
The United States’ population is currently rising exponentially and with growth comes demographic shifts. Some of the demographics shifts include the population growth of Hispanics, increase in senior citizens especially minority elderly, increase in number of residents who do not speak English, increase in foreign-born residents, population trends of people from different sexual orientation, and trends of people with disabilities (Perez & Luquis, 2009). As a public health practitioner, the only way to effectively eliminate health disparities among Americans, one must explore and embrace the demographic shifts of the United States population because differences exist among ethnic groups (Perez, 2009). We must be cognizant of the adverse health conditions for each population and the types of socioeconomic factors that affect them. Culture helps shape an individual’s health related beliefs, values, and behaviors. It is more than ethnicity and race; culture involves economic, political, religious, psychological, and biological aspects (Kleinman & Benson, 2006). All of these conditions take on an emotional tone and moral meaning for participants (Kleinman & Benson, 2006). As a health professional, it is one’s duty to have adequate knowledge and awareness of various cultures to effectively promote health behavior change. Cultural and linguistic competencies through cultural humility are two important aspects of working in the field of public health. Cultural competency is having a sense of understanding and respect for different cultural groups, while linguistic competency is the complete awareness of the language barriers that impact the health of individuals. These concepts are used to then work effectively work with various pop...
Diabetes is a prevalent health disparity among the Latino population. Diabetes is listed as the fifth leading cause of death among the Latino population in the website for Center for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, in 2009. According to McBean, “the 2001 prevalence among Hispanics was significantly higher than among blacks.” (2317) In other words among the Hispanic or Latino community, there is a higher occurrence of diabetes as compared to other racial/ethnic groups such as Blacks and Native Americans. The prevalence of diabetes among Latinos is attributed to the social determinants of health such as low socioeconomic status and level of education. Further, this becomes an important public health issue when it costs the United States $174 billion in both direct and indirect costs, based on the 2007 The National Diabetes Fact Sheet released by the CDC. In turn, medical expenses are twice as high for a patient that has diabetes as opposed to one without. Finally, this high cost becomes another barrier to receiving care for Latinos when some are in the low socioeconomic status.
I support position A, which is public health interventions are primarily responsible for improvements of child and mother health. Because the most interventions is related to public health and not medical care interventions, for instance, hygiene, sewage, good nutrition, education, changing behaviors such as quit smoking and so on have contributed to reduce infant mortality and maternal as mentioned in the article 4. We can notice that public health interventions through three levels of care. Primary interventions are before pregnancy such as check health of women if she has chronic or infectious diseases and advise women to change unhealthy behaviors such as avoid alcohol and tobacco. Secondary interventions are during pregnancy such as providing
Over the last few years, I shadowed a Primary Care Adult Nurse Practitioner whose office is located in the underserved urban area of Irvington, NJ. She also takes care of patients from the surrounding areas of Irvington, Newark, and East Orange, all of which have very large underserved populations including African Americans, Latinos, and patients from the Middle East. During my clinical shadowing, I gained a appreciation for the complexity of treating long term chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, HIV, and hypertension. In many cases these conditions were exacerbated due to poor nutrition, non-compliance, and lack of education about healthy lifestyle choices. I gained a keen understanding of the importance of patient education and the ability to connect patients with community services to help them with their economic and social challenges.
... This may be regarded as a final step of assistance but is important in other to provide quality care to all individuals regardless of ethnicity, race, cultural or educational background. Therefore, as nurses, we have the capabilities to educate Hispanic minority. Education must be given in the language they choose and provide interpreters if needed. In conclusion, everybody needs to be treated with respect and dignity.
The ultimate goal of the Harlem Children’s Zone was to transform Central Harlem. This area covered a stretch of 24 blocks, and the aim was to provide academic opportunities to young students and their families. The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) has been noted for bringing an unique approach to helping the members of that community ascend out of the grip of poverty, unemployment and adequate educational achievement.
During my time in nursing school, I joined the Hispanic Health Initiative which further solidified my calling to work with the Hispanic community