Sociopolitical Barriers To Health Essay

Your GP can assess whether you have incontinence, decide which type of incontinence you have, give general advice on controlling symptoms of incontinence, provide information on pelvic floor exercises and bladder retraining, and give treatment for incontinence with prescribed medicines. If lifestyle changes and treatments don't solve the problem, your GP can refer you to a continence adviser or specialist.

Being a minority in the United States has and will possibly always been a struggle. With the economy being in shams and minimum wage becoming career, minorities have multiple issues that society is unaware especially in health care. A large percent of minorities are the majority of workers of America, in which requires the most of the health care distribution. But are they receiving the proper access to health care and prescription access based on their ethnicity/race? Discrimination and racism continue to be a part of the unbalancing inequality in society and have adversely affected minority populations, and the health care system in general. Analyzing some of the racial disparities in health care among Americans are modifications in both need and access. Minorities are most likely to need health care but are less likely to receive health care services, including proper drug access.

Barriers in health care can lead to disparities in meeting health needs and receiving appropriate care, including preventive services and the prevention of unnecessary hospitalizations (HealthyPeople.gov, 2012). In their 2008 annual report, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality lists several disparities’ in health care. They report that racial and ethnic minorities in the United States

According to the dictionary, the word health is “the state of being free from illness.” At a first glance, this defination seems to be very direct and simple, however the meaning of the word ‘health’ nowadays is much more complex. The above definition pretty much sums up our view of health in the first half of the 20th century.

According to the office of the minority health, approximately 48% of African American women and 44% of African American men suffer from some form of the cardiovascular disease which includes heart disease and stroke and adults are 40 percent more likely to have high blood pressure while the women are 1.6 times more likely to die from heart diseases and complications than other ethnic groups (The Office of Minority Health, 2016).

Healthy People 2020 discusses a number of special population’s that have barriers to care including; race, age sex, sexual identity, age, disability, socioeconomic, and location; this post will discuss race (ethnic) group.  There are a number of races mentioned in healthy people 2020, such as, Asian, American Indian, Alaskan, Latino and African American (Healthy People 2020, n.d.). Access to health care in an ethnic group is multifaceted from the lack of trust, lack of health care education, discrimination and cost of care including health insurance. According to Howard, Peace, & Howard (2014), African Americans have a greater risk of three preventable diseases, hypertension, renal failure and bacterial infections stating; “no other disease

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “health disparities are preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or in opportunities to achieve optimal health experienced by socially disadvantaged racial, ethnic, and other population groups, and communities” (CDC, 2017).  It  is easy to believe that control on overall health relies solely on making  a firm decision (the “right” decision" to lead a healthy lifestyle— by being active and eating a balanced-diet. There are other factors to be considered in evaluating and understanding health disparities: why people seem to be noncompliant? Or why people aren’t seeking medical attention in a timely manner?  In reading

With this increased research and effort, Americans would be able to intervene and make positive impacts with the state, tribal, and local levels to best address health disparities and inequalities. In efforts to thwart ethnic and minority disparities, The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) passed the HHS Disparities Action Plan in order to establish “a nation free of disparities in health and health care, (Cooper 97)” and to implement a series of priorities, strategies, actions, and goals to achieve this vision. States, local communities, private organizations, and providers have additionally engaged in efforts to reduce health disparities. With the HHS Disparities Action Plan, the Department continuously assess policies and programs on racial and ethnic health disparities, watching to see which policies make an impact on the level of health care received by minorities. Similarly, The Affordable Care Act (ACA) health coverage expansions significantly increase coverage options for low and moderate income populations and particularly benefit the “vulnerable populations.” The ACA also includes provisions to strengthen the safety-net delivery system, improve

In today’s society, there are many different factors that can contribute to one’s overall health and well-being. Since there are so many different factors that can affect one’s health, there are inequalities that exist among people and this is knows as health disparity. "Health disparities are differences in the incidence, prevalence, mortality, and burden of diseases and other adverse health conditions that exist among specific population groups in the United States” (Nhlbi.nih.gov, 2015). Health disparities can be associated with factors such as: socioeconomic status, education, gender, race, ethnicity, age, mental health, and religion. There are certain health problems that can affect different groups more than others, such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and HIV/AIDS (Surgeongeneral.gov, 2015). One example of a specific population in the United States that is affected by health disparities is the African American Population. While African Americans are affected by various health disparities, one that affects this population more prominently is heart disease.

Health disparities endure tenacious issues in the United States of America, setting certain groups at higher risk of being uninsured, limited access to care, facing a poorer quality of care, and overall negative health outcomes. The high incidence of health disparities reflects the range of individual, social, economic, racial/ethnic and environmental magnitudes. Among the minority groups, African-Americans disproportionately access health care and the health disparities clearly glow in the nationwide.

The United States is a melting pot of cultural diversity. For a country that was founded by individuals fleeing persecution, it has taken us many years to grant African-Americans equal rights, and even longer for those rights to be recognized. Despite all the effort to eliminate inequality in this country, health disparity among this minority group remains a significant issue. Research in this area has pointed to several key reasons for this gap that center on differences in culture, socioeconomics, and lack of health literacy.

Although the United States is a leader in healthcare innovation and spends more money on health care than any other industrialized nation, not all people in the United State benefit equally from this progress as a health care disparity exists between racial and ethnic minorities and white Americans. Health care disparity is defined as “a particular type of health difference that is closely linked with social or economic disadvantage…adversely affecting groups of people who have systematically experienced greater social and/or economic obstacles to health and/or clean environment based on their racial or ethnic group; religion; socioeconomic status; gender; age; mental health; cognitive, sensory or physical disability; sexual orientation or gender identity; geographic location; or other characteristics historically linked to discrimination or exclusion” (National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities [NPAEHD], 2011, p. 3). Overwhelming evidence shows that racial and ethnic minorities receive inferior quality health care compared to white Americans, and multiple factors contribute to these disparities, including geography, lack of access to adequate health coverage, communication difficulties between patients and providers, cultural barriers, and lack of access to providers (American College of Physicians,

The disparities are around us every day and unless we educate ourselves and our communities these disparities will continue to wreak havoc on our neighborhoods and in the future, we will just be putting our kids and their kids in a continuing cycle of ignorance when we could have done more if it’s just educating the community we leave in, that alone could be enough to turn the tides in our people favor. In turn, I would hope this paper enlighten you on what is going on in our neighborhood and what we can do to correct this issue to preserve our autonomy. Racial and ethnic health disparities undermine what a healthcare system should stand for. Although the top three causes and seven of the 10 leading causes of death are the same for African Americans and whites, the risk factors and incidence, morbidity, and mortality rates for these diseases and injuries often are greater among blacks than whites (MMWR, 2005). Health disparities refer to differences in disease risks, incidence, morbidity, and mortality but most of all for the sake of this paper unequal access to quality health insurance amongst African American in the United States, which will also go hand and hand with the social and economic disadvantages. The disadvantages of health disparities usually affect people of African American descent who have systemically experienced a greater social and economic obstacle to health care.

One issue with underserved populations is an increase in health disparities, not only race and ethnicity, but also gender and age. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (2014) list a number of key findings from a report on underserved populations and health care. Mortality rates from certain diseases and different types of death were higher in different racial groups than Caucasians (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014). Morbidity of asthma, oral disease, tuberculosis, obesity, and diabetes were also higher in minority groups (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014). Preventive screening for the over-50 population was just over 60%

The article I chose to analyze is titled Coping in parents of children who are chronically ill: strategies for assessment and intervention, which focused on psychosocial and physical health related determinants in their strategy to confront caregiver burden and promote positive coping strategies to identified stressors. The research done by Melnyk, Feinstein, Moldenhouer, and Small (2001), addressed strategies for assessing stress related needs in parents of chronically ill children and health promotional interventions, which have similarities to aspects of the group’s video and components of their health promotional program structure. Specifically, Melnyk et al. (2001), explore the effects of their educational-behavioral program pilot