Health
Care Injustice
The more I read, the more eye opening
opportunities I have. Most of the time
it is a status quo of a society built on race and gender discrimination where
people of color are suffering in all aspects of life including health
care. Those people are living in a very
hard situation that contributing to less fortunate conditions with education,
employment, housing and also health care.
"Of all the
forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and
inhumane." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
African Americans have higher death rates than whites from cancer (1/4 higher), heart disease (1/3 higher), diabetes (twice as high), homicide (more than 5 times as high), and AIDS (more than 8 times as high). The infant mortality rate for the African Americans was, in 2002-2003, over twice as high as for whites. In all, the lower you are in a social hierarchy, the worse your health and the shorter your life is likely to be.
African Americans have higher death rates than whites from cancer (1/4 higher), heart disease (1/3 higher), diabetes (twice as high), homicide (more than 5 times as high), and AIDS (more than 8 times as high). The infant mortality rate for the African Americans was, in 2002-2003, over twice as high as for whites. In all, the lower you are in a social hierarchy, the worse your health and the shorter your life is likely to be.
Many factors contribute to racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic
health disparities, including inadequate access to care, poor quality of care,
community features (such as poverty and violence) and personal behaviors. These
factors are often associated with underserved racial and ethnic minority
groups, individuals who have experienced economic obstacles, those with
disabilities and individuals living within medically
underserved communities. Consequently, individuals living in both
urban and rural areas may experience health disparities.
Despite ongoing efforts to reduce health disparities in the United
States, racial and ethnic disparities in both health and health care persist.
Even when income, health insurance and access to care are accounted for,
disparities remain. Low performance on a range of health
indicators—such as infant mortality, life expectancy, prevalence of chronic
disease, and insurance coverage—reveal differences between racial and ethnic
minority populations and their white counterparts.
Jennifer Ng’andu, deputy director of the Health Policy Project at
the National Council of La Raza in Washington, speaks even more pointedly: “If
we look at communities of color, we see that many racial and ethnic groups live
in unsafe environments, there is poor housing and there is loss of productivity
because of illness.
“Essentially, every time a person of color goes to the doctor, 30
percent of their bill is due to health disparities so they end up paying more
in the doctor’s office because over time they receive health care that is not
appropriate or effective,” she says. “They become needlessly sicker and are
more likely to die prematurely, so they end up paying more medical expenses.”
Health experts and civic leaders say financial strains are
adversely manifested in varying ways in communities and have a huge impact on
children, often involving academic performance.
“There are direct biological consequences in that a child who does
not have good access to health services will experience developmental setbacks
because they are sick or their parents are sick,” Ng’andu says. “It makes it
harder for them to achieve in school and can have serious consequences on their
future. We have to invest in children early, their health early, their
education, making sure they have healthy communities to grow in.”
Ng’andu agrees. “When kids are hungry, when
they are exposed to serious nerve stress and environmental stresses,” she says,
“it affects them and their ability to learn and perform well
academically. Investment in their health is very important to their future
success and achievement and also their ability to work and contribute to their
communities.”
Hernandez-Cancio says disparities in infant mortality
rates also take a toll on minority families. While the 2010 rate for whites was
5.63 per 1,000 live births, it was 13.31 per 1,000 live births for African-Americans,
9.22 for American Indians or Alaska Natives and 7.71 for Puerto Ricans,
according to the CDC.
“The infant mortality rate is considered a very basic
measure of how a country’s health care system is working, and it is an
indication of other symptoms,” she says. “We rank 41st globally. As an advanced, wealthy
nation, we are not doing well.”
With the quotation said by Martin Luther King, Jr, hasn't
the prejudice that prevailed in those far off times been eliminated in today's
more equitable society? Or do health disparities persist in less obvious but no
less worrying ways -- and not just for African-Americans?
Studies
emphatically conclude that such disparities do persist.
U.S.
News and World Report released its latest issue announcing the best hospitals
in the nation on Tuesday. People put a lot of stock in these rankings, and
equality of treatment should be considered as a factor in what makes a hospital
excellent.
“Unequal
Treatment”, published by the Institute of Medicine in 2002, spelled out exactly
how Latinos, African-Americans, Native-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Pacific
Islanders receive care that's inferior to that enjoyed by mainstream Americans.
The IOM report triggered other studies that demonstrated the (often
unconscious) prejudice that prevails in treating women, the elderly, the LGBT
community, the obese --13 groups in all -- a large percentage of the health
care consuming public.
Here
are a few shocking examples: Women with symptoms of heart disease often are not
transported by emergency medical services to health facilities as rapidly as
men. Women and blacks with heart attack symptoms are not given cardiac
catheterizations and other appropriate clinical tests at the same rate as white
men. Latinos and African-Americans do not receive the same pain medication for
long bone fractures as do their fellow citizens.
According to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of
consensus.”
Dr.
King is telling us that if we want to be leaders, we need to lead—that is, we
need to develop ideas and convince others of their merit. A leader doesn’t
figure out where everyone is going and then jump to the front of the line. A
leader chooses a destination, convinces others of the merits of taking the
trip, shows them how they can get there, and then leads them on the journey. Let’s allow the leader in ourselves to be
awakened. Our nation’s health depends on it.
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