Reducing Disparities in Healthcare Essay Example

Health and health care disparities, more specifically, may also refer to differences that variations in patient preferences, health care needs and treatments recommendations cannot explain. Disparities are experienced by different groups of individuals based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, income, status, disability and geography. Most disparities, in the United States, are common among racial and ethnic minorities, who represent approximately one-thirds of the country’s population (Marmot and Commission on Social Determinants of Health, 2007).

Health disparity is a common problem affecting ethnic minorities in the United States. Studies indicate that compared with white populations, racial and ethnic minorities have higher mortality rates, higher chronic conditions prevalence and poorer health outcomes. According to statistics from The National Center for Health, blacks have a higher mortality rate compared to the white. Additionally, black infants have more than twice rates of infants mortality compared to white infants. African Americans have been reported to have incident of cancer at a rate of 10%, asthma at 28% higher than those of the whites and rates of systemic lupus erythematosus in African American females two to three times higher in white females. These minority groups also have higher prevalence of stroke, diabetes and other preventable conditions and diseases compared to the whites. Studies also indicate that African Americans have a high prevalent of infectious diseases including hepatitis C accounting for 22% of all cases reported. Additionally, out of all the cases of gonorrhea, syphilis and Chlamydia reported in 2007, African Americans accounted for 70% and 50% of cases respectively (Lillie-Blanton, 2008). In overall, African Americans compared to their white counterparts are more likely to experience health disparities at some point in their

medical history.

These minorities are likely to experience health care disparities. Minorities are bound to experience various barriers including cultural barriers and differences in socio-economic language hindering access to proper health care resulting higher rates of hospital readmissions as well as poorer health outcomes. Statistics indicates that African Americans are more likely to succumb to heart diseases (Spinks et al, 2012). Several researches indicate that clinical needs or access related factors, appropriateness of intervention mechanisms and preferences are not the root causes differences experienced in access of quality health care. They also indicate that these groups of minorities were more likely to receive lower quality services and less likely to access medical procedures on routine basis. This is because on many occasions, health providers may stereotype minorities, display uncertainty during treatment and show some form of biasness in treating them.

Sources of Disparities

Disparities in health care stems for a number of complex and interrelated factors including individual factors, health systems, providers, environmental and societal factors. Individual factors encompasses a person’s behaviors ranging from maintenance of a healthy diets and lifestyles to adherence to medical advices while provider factors entail a number of issues including barriers to provider-patient communication as well as provider’s biasness (Lillie-Blanton, 2008). Health care’s delivery, organization and finances shape disparities while environmental and social factors including education, poverty and proximity also play a role in health and health care disparities.

Economic and social factors including education, income levels and the surrounding living conditions have been identified as the main drivers of health disparities. Studies indicate that white holding a bachelor degree were likely to live 17 years longer than a high school black drop out

and vice versa. it also indicated that adults lacking decent financial foundations were less likely to have access to safe playground or healthy foods. Surrounding neighborhoods and geography are also likely to increase health disparities because of the prevailing conditions. Blacks are reported to experience high rates of health disparities compared to the whites because they are believed to live in neighborhoods full of fast-food outlets, dump sites and factories and with less recreational facilities and grocery stores. This exposes them to higher risks of deaths associated with unhealthy lifestyles. Health disparities may also stem from increased stress resulting from social environments leading to increased incidents of diseases. Poverty and other hardships cause chronic stress increasing the levels of stress hormones epinephrine and cortisol leading to low immune system performance (Betancourt, 2006).

Health care disparities are also experienced by minorities for various. Poverty is one of the main contributors of health care disparities. Secondly, most minorities have low socioeconomic status translating to inability to secure health insurance covers thus, limiting their ability to access to quality health care. Thirdly, the existence of biasness and ignorance from providers has made it difficult for certain groups of people to access health care. Several cases, especially in people with disabilities have showed that care providers may stigmatize or ignore them, making it impossible to for them to access health care on time. Finally, minorities experience difficulties maneuvering through the complex health care systems in the United States. Complexity in the health system and lack of cultural familiarity have been cited as leading obstacles to access of high and quality health care services by minorities. Other factors leading to disparities

in health care cited by physicians include linguistic barriers hindering communication, patient’s non-adherence to doctor’s treatment recommendations and lack of time to interact with the patients (Lillie-Blanton, 2008).

Reducing Disparities

Now the question that we should be asking ourselves is, how do we narrow these disparities? Health and health care disparities are costly for the nation as the increase health care costs, cause premature deaths and reduction in work productivity. In 2009, the cost of diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke among Hispanics and African Americans amounted to approximately $23.9 billion. Between 2003 and 2006, lost productivity and wages as a result of health disparities amounted to $1.2 trillion (Hellander, 2008). Addressing health and health care disparities will not only be doing the Americans social justice, but also a way of achieving improvements in the overall American’s population health and quality care and thus promoting health.

Various policies can be used to address this issue. First, action should be raised to raise provider and public awareness of the existence of a problem that require immediate action. This is because if providers or the public do not know if there exists a problem, it would be difficult to address that particular problem. Perceptions toward a particular issue play a role in changing policies and practices to address the issue at hand. Studies indicate that physicians do not realize treating patient’s unfairly and also indicates that they strongly disagree with the notion that minorities receive low quality care (Betancourt, 2006). Secondly, all efforts should be dedicated to expand health care coverage especially among the minority groups who continue to show disproportionate representation with regards to health insurance coverage.

Thirdly, health organization

should institute reforms aimed at diversifying the workforce to address the issue of minority underrepresentation and to promote culturally competent care to reduce cultural and linguistic barriers between health care providers and patients (Bacigalupe and Askari, 2013). Finally, health organizations should strive to increase their knowledge base by continuously collecting and analyzing data concerning the minority groups to identify possible problems early and develop intervention mechanisms. This can be done through training providers to offer linguistically and culturally appropriate health care services, provision of financial incentives to improve on health care quality and analyzing outside factors such as education, socioeconomic status and geography to understand their impact on health care. Reducing health and healthcare disparities is possible. All we have to do is work together, identify the problem and dedicate all our efforts towards it.

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References

1. Bacigalupe, G., & Askari, S. F. (2013). E-Health innovations, collaboration, and healthcare disparities: developing criteria for culturally competent evaluation. Families, Systems, & Health, 31(3), 248.
2. Betancourt, J. R. (2006). Eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health care: what is the role of academic medicine?.
3. Academic Medicine, 81(9), 788-792. Hellander, I. (2008). The deepening crisis in US health care: a review of data, Spring 2008.
4. International Journal of Health Services, 38(4), 607-623. Lillie-Blanton, M. (2008). Addressing disparities in health and health care: Issues
   

for reform. Marmot, M., & Commission on Social Determinants of Health. (2007). Achieving health equity: from root causes to fair outcomes. The Lancet, 370(9593), 1153-1163.