These include things like cultural norms ex. There are dozens of social factors exacerbating health disparities, but the Healthy People objectives have put just five front and center: economic stability, education, social and community context, health and health care, and neighborhood and built environment. Economic stability refers to things like food security, income or wealth, housing stability , and employment opportunities, and research shows addressing some of these issues could help reduce disparities associated with a whole range of health issues.
Providing housing assistance , for example, has been shown to improve both the psychological and physical health of individuals. Similarly, providing influenza vaccination in poorer neighborhoods could help reduce gaps in hospitalization due to flu. And increasing economic opportunities for financially insecure women might help prevent the disproportionately high number of cases of HIV in that population.
Investing in things like language and literacy, early childhood education, high school graduation, and higher education could help close health gaps in a number of ways. Increased access to center-based early childhood education, for example, has been shown to decrease crime and teen births.
High school completion programs also have strong returns on investment—often resulting in improved economic benefits that exceed any costs associated with the program—in part because of averted healthcare costs.
While not always apparent, social influences and dynamics can significantly impact the health of both individuals and the overall community. These include things like incarceration, discrimination, civic participation, and social cohesion. Because incarceration can disrupt families and impact access to things like education, employment, and housing, some researchers have called for policy changes that address sentencing laws that disproportionately impact certain Black communities as a means to reduce several disparities, including HIV.
Many medical issues in the United States could be prevented with routine, preventive care like health screenings, vaccinations, and lifestyle changes. The Affordable Care Act attempted to expand access to primary care by making it easier to get health insurance and requiring insurance companies to cover the whole cost of preventive services , like blood pressure screenings and obesity counseling.
The law also called on medical and public health professionals to address health literacy by ensuring everyone can obtain, understand, and communicate information essential to health decisions. More than 28 million people , however, still lack health insurance, and more can be done to ensure increased access to health care in the United States.
Improving access to healthy foods, supporting healthy eating behaviors, improving the quality of housing, reducing crime and violence, and protecting the environment are all things that can be done to improve the environmental health of a community and reduce health disparities as a result.
One important example of ways the United States could reduce health disparities in obesity rates is addressing the issue of food deserts and food swamps. Building partnerships between local governments, food retailers such as grocery stores , and communities could help bring more affordable and healthier food options to areas where such foods are scarce.
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What are your concerns? Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Diversity in Medicine: Facts and Figures Burns, J. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Does health insurance impact the survival of babies with heart defects? Collins, J. The Journal of Pediatrics, , Lopez, K. Circulation , Minority Nurse. Nursing Statistics. Salciccioli, K. Disparities in insurance coverage among hospitalized adult congenital heart disease patients before and after the Affordable Care Act.
Birth Defects Research , Smith-East, M. Issues in Mental Health Nursing , Health disparities and health inequities are differences between the health outcomes of Whites and people of color in terms of length of life, quality of life, and social well-being.
In the United States, life expectancy is 79 years, and any death occurring before that age is premature. The quality of life refers to the average number of good physical days a person has yearly, and is related to social well-being, which refers to a state of complete physical and mental well-being. Studies of health disparities and health inequities explore the dynamics of the most destructive element of racial oppression in the United States — health inequity.
Why is a discussion of these issues so crucial to Black Buffalo? If disease ravages African Americans, it will cause them to spend many days feeling sick and tired. Therefore, we commit ourselves to the battle to improve health outcomes for African Americans. Health disparities and health inequities fuse with racial and social justice, as well as human rights. The Institute defines race-based health disparities as differences in health outcomes between Blacks, and people of color, and Whites.
These health differences are rooted in socioeconomic inequities between whites and people of color based on systemic structural racism. The disparities measure stresses the disproportionate race-based health outcomes between Whites and people of color, while the health equity definition stresses the injustice and oppression that undergirds these differences. The undesirable health outcomes result from the deliberate creation of neighborhood and societal conditions that lead to the social determinants that result in these adverse health outcomes.
Thus, health disparities are useful for assessing the health status of Blacks and people of color, but health equity is the most appropriate term for defining the health outcome goals for those communities. The complete picture of health is made up of all of the determinants of health.
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