Name
Institution
Course
Date
This paper addresses issues that are concerned with the health disparity of minority groups of a population of people living in the United States of America. It gives a clear elaboration of such health disparities encountered by this population and gives the causes of the disparities. Also, these health disparities are considered to impact the study population even though the impacts have been emerging to be negative. The paper will also give results of the health disparities found in the population being studied and consider a conclusion that will be providing measures that should be implemented to deal with the disparities because they have turned up to affect many people and groups.
Health disparity can be defined as a specific kind of health difference that is linked to economic, social, and environmental disadvantages closely (Braveman, 2014). The disparity can also be termed as a lack of equality or similarity, difference, or inequality. In this case, my topic is based on the disparities found in a specific population in the United States. According to the population being studied, poor people and Hispanics are prone to disparities in situations where access is common in gender, race and ethnicity, disability status or needs of special health care, sexual identity and orientation, and finally, in a geographic location that can either be rural and urban.
Under the results of my background literature research, I found that:
- A group of exceeding 100 million people living in the United States identified and recognized themselves as a group of people who were belonging and living in an ethnic as well as a racial minority population.
- Around 154 million people who were existing in the population being studied were women.
- Approximately 36 million people living in nursing homes and other facilities found in the population being studied established to act as residential care suffered from a disability.
- An estimate of 70.5 million people of the study population has been living in rural areas approximated as 23% of the studied population. Another 233.5 million people were found to be living in urban areas, which are estimated to be 77% of the population subjected to the research study on literature review.
- According to the research study that was conducted on the population being studied, it was found that around 4% of the population of the United States of America at a range ranging from 18 to 44 in the minority groups is lesbians, bisexual, gay or transgender (Fredriksen-Goldsen et al., 2013).
Health disparities in the population are found to be resulting from social, economic, personal as well as environmental characteristics of racial and ethnic groups like living conditions that are poor, racial segregation, racism, stereotyping, discrimination, and primary education that were of low quality (Cunningham et al., 2017). Under the facts and figures on health disparity of the population subjected to study, African Americans are 1.4 times compared to whites to be suffering from high blood pressure, also known as hypertension. Additionally, African Americans are prone to die from stroke and heart diseases compared to other people in other ethnic and racial groups. Besides, stroke and heart disease have emerged as the most significant reason they’re in the existence of inequality in health disparity in minority groups in the life expectancy among African Americans and whites (Artiga et al., 2016).
In conclusion, health disparities in minorities can be identified by viewing the race and ethnicity lens of the population being studied, which occur across a range of broad dimensions. After identification, one can note that these disparities are caused by factors like lack of workforce that is diverse, poor, inadequate access to care, lack of interpreters, and time constraints. However, these disparities can be reduced by focusing on improving health care quality, expanding high-quality healthcare access, strengthening national coordination and efforts, helping on how to increase the diversity of professionals in healthcare, and finally promoting a health professional education that is more aggressive.
Reference
Artiga, S., Orgera, K., & Pham, O. (2016). Disparities in health and health care: Five key questions and answers. Washington, DC: Kaiser Family Foundation. http://kff. org/disparities-policy/issue-brief/disparities-in-health-and-health-carefive-key-questions-and-answers/Accessed March, 7, 2017.
Braveman, P. (2014). What are health disparities and health equity? We need to be clear. Public health reports, 129(1_suppl2), 5-8.
Cunningham, T. J., Croft, J. B., Liu, Y., Lu, H., Eke, P. I., & Giles, W. H. (2017). Vital signs: racial disparities in age-specific mortality among blacks or African Americans—the United States, 1999–2015. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 66(17), 444.
Fredriksen-Goldsen, K. I., Kim, H. J., Barkan, S. E., Muraco, A., & Hoy-Ellis, C. P. (2013). Health disparities among lesbian, gay, and bisexual older adults: Results from a population-based study. American journal of public health, 103(10), 1802-1809.