Disparities In Health Care Case Study

Health care inequality is a prevalent issue in Massachusetts and around the United States. Low-income families and individuals all over the country are barred from receiving adequate and necessary health care due to a lack of insurance or due to restrictive policies in their existing insurance. According to a report done by the Working Poor Families Project in 2013 titled Low-Income Working Families: The Growing Economic Gap, a low-income family is defined as one who earns less than twice the federal poverty line, while a poor family is defined as one who earns less than the federal poverty line. For a family of four with two children to be considered low-income in 2011, the threshold was $45,622, with the federal poverty line being $22,811. (Population Reference Bureau) Over 43 million people in the United States, including 9 million children, do not have health insurance; the majority of these people are immigrants and people of color.

The dominant root causes for this health inequality is individuals culture, education, treatment and fear of stigmatization. Put forward, one of the major causes of the mortality rate between mothers and new born are the decision to not seeking out medical treatment from clinics or hospitals out stigmatization. (Kakuma, Kleintjies, Lund, Drew, Green & Flisher, 2010). Stigma is obtain paired with the fear of being judged by others (Silal et al., 2012). Silal et al.

In the America’s health care system, inequities and disparities in breast cancer wither its economical, racial, or environmental inequalities are considered to be a vital and relevant reasons that drive inequalities that is being noticed in breast cancer epidemic. For the African American community, more profound impact is seen from increasing rates of reproductive health problems to the lack of a decent health care. Such inequalities and disparities are a sign of bigger social inequities. A systemic approach is much needed to point out the fundamental disparities if we are looking to find better solutions and health polices to assist us with breast cancer prevention and treatment. There may be many reasons that lead to variations in cancer screening rates in America.

Institutional racism is discrimination by entities through unethical treatment of individuals based on race and ethnicity. Institutional racism refers to upstream factors that affect an individual’s health conditions, such as policies favoring the more privileged. On the other hand, individual racism is judgement, attitudes, and actions of individuals towards other people of another race. Institutional racism may not be intentional, but individual racism is deliberate by targeting harmful words and thoughts towards specific marginalized

One aspect of medicine that truly intrigues me is the experience of pain. I feel that the patient experience of pain is often overlooked in the medical field. Linking pain with the topic of sociology, I am curious about the relationship between pain treatment and race. For my final paper, I would like to explore how race is linked to disparities in pain treatment and the overarching systematic inequality of healthcare. I think it would be fascinating to explore the statistical discrepancies between differing pain treatment between races and ponder on how to close the gap between them.

“In recent times, discrimination has been reconceptualized to include the chronic stressors, or everyday experiences with discrimination, that take a significant toll on individuals’ physical and psychological health” (Araújo & Borrell, 2006). Thus, it is becoming increasingly important to identify the particular stressors that negatively affect the daily lives of marginalized groups. “One of the ways that chronic stressors have been found to negatively impact people of color (i.e., Latina/os, Asian Americans, and Blacks) is through experiences with racial and ethnic microaggressions” (Nadal, 2011; Rivera, Forquer, & Rangel, 2010; Sue, Bucceri, Lin, Nadal, & Torino, 2007; Sue et al., 2008). Racial microaggressions are defined

Due to the uneven division of the labour, people from the minorities have higher risk to develop diseases of the respiratory system (tuberculosis, pneumonia, bronchitis, silicosis, etc.) and musculoskeletal system. They also have more problems with early diagnosing, cancer, cardiovascular and lung diseases . One cause for that is cultural differences of the way Roma people define “being ill”. A lot of different chronic conditions, that don`t cause great suffering or inability to work are being largely ignored (Krumuva & Ilieva 2008, p.28).

Healthcare Associated Infections Healthcare-associated infections affect a large proportion of the population due to technological, staffing, and organizational challenges that undermine the quality of care for citizens. According to Lorden et al. (2017), over 3.5 million of all hospital admissions in 2010 were preventable. Most of them are linked to hospital associated infections (HAIs) obtained from healthcare settings. In particular, catheter associated infections of the urinary tract are the leading causes of morbidity as patients receive treatment for different kidney conditions.

What factors do you think contribute to the disparities in health among ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender groups in your country? Back to my country, Indonesia, it has more than 14 thousand islands scatter within 5 thousand miles from East to West in South East Asian region. There are tremendous disparities between islands to other islands in health due to ability to access to health facilities; poor; low education; and area isolation. As described by Crimmins, Hayward and Seeman (2004) that poorer and less education people will likely to suffer from diseases. Poorer people always experience with cognitively and physically impaired.

Without good health care, people are not able to get the proper treatment they need to be healthy. Reported by Understanding Social Problems, " In the United States, low socioeconomic status is associated with higher incidence and prevalence of health problems, and lower life expectancy" (Mooney, 40). This is

A common theme that has been discussed regarding the adversities that immigrants experience when arriving to the America are the social and cultural clashes between immigrants and citizens. What I find interesting is the conflicts pertaining to the health care system. Based on previous lectures, immigrants tend to mistrust the American healthcare system due to difference in medical remedies and the language spoken. I know first hand that my mother would perfer to have a Ghanaian physician, as opposed to the general white American doctor. Anne Fadiman wrote a successful award-winning book called, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which highlights how the cultural differences between the Hmong culture and American medicine jeopardized the health of a little girl named Lia Lee.

Subsequently, I have noticed similar issues in the United States. Social issues such as high cost of medical expense, limited access to healthy and affordable food and people being marginalization based on their livelihood. These issues are caused by systematic problems that affect minorities within the countries.