Disparities In Healthcare.

Hello, everyone! For this week’s post, I want to discuss an issue that has plagued racial and ethnic minority communities across the United States. This issue is one that has been receiving national attention for some time now and also is extremely important in terms of the standard of living that ethnic minorities are able to experience. This issue is, of course, health care disparity.

One of the major factors that determine the standard of living that a certain community can exhibit depends on the community’s proximity to multiple clinics and hospitals that provide quality healthcare to the members of the community. Unfortunately, it has been observed recently by the healthcare community that the disparity in access to quality healthcare among ethnic minorities such as African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans is one of the most pressing issues that needs to be solved in order to increase the number of positive health outcomes in the United States.

While doing research about this issue, I stumbled upon an interesting article by the Center of Medicare Advocacy, which will inform my discussion of this issue. First of all, what are “health disparities?” This term refers to the fact that groups that have historically been “socially disadvantaged” and/or discriminated against are more likely to experience more negative health outcomes and worse health than “socially advantaged” groups. The term, in the context of racial and ethnic minorities, refers to the “increased presence and severity” of certain conditions, negative health outcomes, and greater difficulty in obtaining quality healthcare services.

An examination of those disparities across the United States paints a clearer picture of the situation. Nationally, African American men are more likely to die from cancer than Caucasian men. Furthermore, while Caucasian men and women are more likely to develop colorectal and breast cancer respectively, African American men and women are more likely to die from those diseases. While one disadvantage might be a coincidence, many disadvantages are a pattern. Ultimately, as the article concludes, the causes of these recurring disadvantages are “socio-economic policies,” “health access issues” that Caucasians are less likely to face, and a lack of “health education” among African-Americans. Through these patterns, it is clear that the disparities in healthcare are not caused by a single issue; on the contrary, there is a web of different issues that work together to cause health inequities.

Among racial and ethnic minorities, poverty is a condition that is not only more pronounced than among socially advantaged groups, but it is also a condition that has echoing effects on a person’s access to healthcare. According to the article by the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a disproportionate percentage of members of minorities lived in poverty as opposed to Caucasians. This directly translates to a lower number of people in those minorities having health insurance, which is a critical thing to have in the US healthcare system. As people lack health insurance, paying the full price of their medical bills may drive them into bankruptcy, which may stop people without health insurance from even going to the doctor in the first place, as they choose to risk their health to simply have enough money to buy food and water.

The extent to which healthcare disparities present a problem is large, so I will split up this issue in both this week’s and next week’s blog posts. However, even from this week’s blog posts, it has become clear that ethnic and racial minorities suffer from disparate access to healthcare, which directly affects the development of those communities. For the healthcare system to finally become the most effective and useful it can be, this issue needs to be fixed, especially as it greatly affects many of America’s people.

Thanks for reading, everyone! As I mentioned above, I will continue to speak about this topic next week, likely using the same article. Nevertheless, I have attached the article below for any who wish to read it.

https://medicareadvocacy.org/medicare-info/health-care-disparities/