Examples Of Health Disparities

The term disparities are referred to as differences. Health disparities are differences between groups of people in health. These differences vary from presence of disease, access to healthcare, from racial/ethnic groups, gender, age groups, environment, and socioeconomic groups. These differences exist largely in the United States with minorities consisting of African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. For example the cancer rate of African Americans is ten percent higher than in Caucasians, and adult African Americans and Hispanics have twice the risk of developing diabetes than Caucasians. (Wikipedia) In the United States minorities tend to lack insurance coverage making it difficult to have access to health care. Health disparities mainly come down to
For a health care professional to be cultural competent that health care professional needs to understand their own views as well as the patients while avoiding stereotyping. Awareness of culture competence is important and will improve health outcomes and health care. Health care professionals need to listen to the patient so that they can learn about the patient’s beliefs as relates to health and illness. The quality of medical care would be even better if health care professionals were to be able to speak outside of their language. Our country is so diverse not everyone speaks English. It would show health care professions really putting in fourth effort as relates to cultural competence. Not getting frustrated, trying to understand, and learning another form of language could improve interpersonal communication with those who are culturally diverse, those with limited English proficiency or those with low health