Vulnerable Populations
African American Youth in Poverty: Washington DC The word vulnerability by definition is “exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally. The term vulnerable population takes it a step further and is defined as “a population at risk”. There are many different versions of the definition of vulnerable population but the underlying message is always a population of heightened risk that needs service. Vulnerable populations exist across, the globe, across the nation, across the city and maybe even across the street from any given person. There are countless organizations that serve these populations yet there is always a strong need for service. These vulnerable populations are most closely associated
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with populations living in poverty, but also include populations such as the elderly and mentally ill. Vulnerable populations can exist in the middle and upper class as well but it is much less likely. The term “middle class” has become quite ambiguous. Merriam Webster defines the term as “a class occupying a position between the upper and lower class” but that marking point varies greatly across the country. Washington DC has one of the widest income gaps in the nation with the top fifth making on average 29 times as much as the lower fifth. This also accounts for Washington DC having the lowest poverty rate in the country with 8.4%, significantly lower than the nation’s average 15%. Take a look into Washington D.C.’s poorest areas, specifically into areas such as wards 7 and 8 and obstacles faced by these neighborhoods in poverty seem endless. Often times Washington DC is referred to as the “Chocolate City” because as it implies, the city is predominantly black with a solid 50% of the city’s population identifying as African American. Only recently, within the last few years, has this demographic slipped below 50 percent in 2011. Nonetheless, the African American population overshadows any other population in Washington because they are in fact still the majority. It dates back to the end of the civil war and the outpour began in the 1950s when living in the city was cheaper and living in the suburbs was more expensive and required a car. According to the U.S Department of Commerce State and County quick facts for 2011, White persons account for 78.1% of people nationwide while they make up about 42.4% of Washington DC. In comparison, black persons make up a mere 13.1% nationally and a whopping 50.7% in the district. Nearly one in five DC residents lives in poverty Taking a look at the youth in Washington DC as well, 72% of the population is black with only 10% of the population white. 70% of students in District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) are on free or reduced lunch. Although attendance rate is at a steady 95%, the graduation rate is only at 56%. Almost half of the students who are attending class everyday are not graduating. Something is clearly wrong here. 4 Free/reduced lunch is offered to students whose family are living below the poverty line, which is currently at $23,550 for a family of four. The picture below provides a snapshot of the poverty guidelines according to the size of a family in the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia.
[pic]
Children living in poverty have their childhoods ruined. In 2009 as many as one in five children were living in poverty accounting for 15.5 million children experiencing the steepest single rise in poverty since 1959. (Portrait of Inequality 2011). Teenagers growing up in poverty face much higher health risks on a daily basis. Damaging effects child abuse and early exposure to violence bring on can be detrimental to a child’s future. Poverty frays family bonds, leaving children with no family support and often left to face difficult obstacles on their own. Washington D.C.’s poorest neighborhoods are facing a serious crisis of hunger. In the capitol of the wealthiest nation, one in eight families struggle with hunger every day, and even when they can scape enough food to feed the family, a healthy option for dinner is rarely in reach. (D.C. Hunger Solutions) Theoretically, when a family doesn’t have enough money to eat enough, obesity is not on the radar. However, fast food and convenience stores completely changed that notion a few decades ago. These high-processed foods are sold at such low prices that most families living in poverty can afford to eat fast food every night. A diet of fast food combined with a lack of physical activity with no motivation to change behavior is a recipe for a child obesity disaster. The problem however is we cannot simply end this behavior by telling these families to eat cook healthier and buy organic produce when the nearest supermarket is miles out of reach and the local convenience stores offer little to no nutrition. This results in an access issue. Teenagers are living in a time where they just want to survive and whatever it is they need to make it to the next day or week is what is going to be habitual. Habitual behaviors are much harder to break. According to the Stages of Change Model, there are five steps towards behavioral change. Many teenagers living in poverty are stuck in the first three phases. The five stages are as follows: Pre-contemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, and Maintenance. Pre-contemplation implies that an individual has not yet considered changing a behavior. Contemplation implies that an individual is actively thinking of the benefits of a behavioral change. An individual in the Preparation stage has made the decision to change with a plan lay out but has not carried out any decision. Action stage is when the behavioral change takes place. The final phase, Maintenance is where the individual makes the behavioral change permanent. (Riegelman 2009) Many teens are either unaware of their vulnerability seeing their situation as a way of life with nothing they can do about it, or they have actively thought about getting out of poverty and are unsure how to achieve these goals. Others have a plan but numerous barriers of daily life become distracting and prevent these teenagers with such vulnerable minds from becoming successful. These barriers vary widely and are something as simple as time, something abusive such as violence, or something more abstract such as culture. Major determinants of health include socioeconomic status, the physical environment and a person’s individual characteristics and behaviors. Aside of resisting participation in risky behaviors, individuals are unlikely to be able to control many of the determinants of health. Education plays a large role in health because it is so vital for climbing out of poverty and a major determinant of health simply because of knowledge. Low levels of education are directly linked with poor health and more stress. Not only is an individual less at risk through more knowledge but also he/she is much more likely to employed at a higher paying job with a degree. With an education, so many more opportunities open for youth living in poverty. The biggest gap found with getting a degree is finding where to get it for a reduced price – with a scholarship. Considering black youth in Washington D.C.
are extremely vulnerable, it is even more vital for them to obtain access to health care, including primary care and vaccinations. Black youth in the Nation’s capitol face the worst odds for graduation rates, teen pregnancy, crime, obesity, gang activity, etc. Many programs in the district are aimed at reducing these odds through several mechanisms. Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington offers holistic approaches to give teens guidance. City Year works with youth ages 17 – 24 uniting D.C from all backgrounds for a full-year service giving them skills and opportunities. Volunteers of City Year serve as tutors, mentors, and role models to change the lives of impoverished children in the district. The stigma that most black men do not attend college is challenged with the organization, Concerned Black Men of Washington D.C. Their vision is to provide opportunities for academic and career achievement through mentors and programs that carry out the needs and discipline that all youth need. Close up foundation has been working in Washington D.C. for over four decades inspiring students to become informed active citizens. Members of the foundation include a national network of dedicated teachers, over 700,000 alumni and partners with varying funding such as the U.S Congress, the Department of Education, the Department of Interior, the Freedom Forum, Bank of America along with various others. Teachers hail from diverse racial, …show more content…
cultural, and economic backgrounds, enhancing the learning that is taking place inside these programs. Justice for D.C. Youth aims at providing a youth friendly environment for political climate. They seek equality through a fair juvenile justice system, as well as offer care for education, employment, aftercare, mental health, etc. Their mission is to mobilize and organize youth to serve as key members in the fight for justice in their communities. (Black Youth Project 2013) Peer Health Exchange is a national non-profit organization aimed at providing teenagers the knowledge and skills they need to make health decisions. These services are provided to 9th graders in public high schools that do not offer health education. The curriculum is a comprehensive set of health workshops. The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) as an initiative towards ending poverty, curbing obesity, and increase affordability of health care in low-income areas founded D.C. Hunger Solutions in 2002. The previously stated programs are merely a snap shot of the service provided for African American adolescents in the district. The main issue with carrying out these programs is that teens are unaware these programs exist. Aside from educating teens on risky behavior and how to get access to care, we need to start by educating these teens on where to find these resources first. More advertisement across the city is needed to bring these programs to the surface of adolescent’s attention. However, money does not grow on trees and funding is by far the biggest cost associated with serving the population. Word of mouth and networking verbally is vital because of the strained resources many of these organizations have, regardless of how much funding they are provided. Living in poverty, barriers to care come at every angle. Barriers include access to care, education, and socioeconomic status, along with a variety of additional cultural, economic and, social barriers. Access to managed care is very difficult for anyone living below the poverty line, especially for African American teens. Managed care provides opportunities to monitor the quality of care and provide patients with preventative services. Primary care can provide teen’s access to specialized care and leads to continuity of care and appropriate referral. It is crucial for a teenager to have a primary care provider in which they feel comfortable with to allow the teen to share personal information to ultimately get the best care. Primary care makes it much more likely for a teen to share information with one regular person rather than if they are always sharing their story with someone new each time and running the risk of a new health provider to pass judgment putting the teen on defense and limiting their confidence in health care, thus not receiving quality care and allowing the health care problem to persist. Although Managed care is ideal, there are many problems with this kind of care for teenagers. The biggest obstacle to overcome is seeking the care. Many challenges are involved with managed care including limits on services and benefits, a lack of trained physicians in adolescent health, and administrative systems that sometimes breach teen’s confidentiality and obstruct access to needed services. (Moss 2004) The Affordable Care Act will diminish limits such as lifetime caps on some on insurance plans, in 2014. Teens are not taken as seriously in the health care world so they often times get overlooked at. An analogy using adoption and foster care can be used to explain the situation; Most people want to adopt babies or small children but the older the kids get, they are more likely thrown into foster care which is much less regulated and many ulterior motives stem from foster care service parents. Foster care is also much less permanent usually only lasting a few years in relation to adoption, which is assumed, for life. Long waiting rooms where adolescents feel uncomfortable or unwelcome to walk in appointments discourage teens from seeking care. Even when a teen is scheduling an appointment, the available times are generally only during the school day when the student is in class and conflicts with the student’s schedule. Some of the toughest barriers to overcome are cultural.
Many first and second-generation youths of color have great difficulty with cultural barriers due to acculturation - the degree to which they assimilate the values beliefs and behaviors of the host culture. Sometimes they don't necessarily agree with the best care the doctor says there is because it conflicts with their values and beliefs on morally treating patients. The American health care system is not the most welcoming into open ideas about spirituality curing, its much more of a direct science approach that does not dismiss miracles but perceives such things as so unlikely that it might as well be
dismissed. Language offers a complex barrier. Translators must be available and equipped in health institutions when language becomes a barrier. Having a relative translate is unethical because they have a bias toward the patient and may withhold information or translate differently because they are not completely certified. Additionally it creates misunderstandings even when a translator is present because often times people rely on the same idioms for different languages that don't necessarily have the same meaning or a direct word of phrase that states the same thing in the native language. Discouraging youth can misinterpret the misunderstandings as their own fault, thus creating another emotional barrier in which the patient withholds information because of the lack of confidence with the doctor. (Moss 2004) If a patient feels judged they are much more likely not to tell the whole story to avoid any more judgment and feel the need to defend themselves by providing less information. This discourages the patient from going back to the physician and maybe even going to another physician in the fear that they will just be looked down upon instead of welcomed with open arms. A commonly overlooked barrier stems from communication patterns. These patterns of speech presuppose that all youth identify from a single gender perspective, share a cultural background and are heterosexual, creating immediate barriers to care for many young adults. (Moss 2004) Community memory plays a role in shaping barriers. A prime example is one of the Tuskegee Syphilis study in which rural African American men with syphilis were recruited to study the long-term effects of syphilis but told they were being tested for a possible cure and treatment. Due to ethical violations such as the Tuskegee study, African Americans have become suspicious of government agencies fearing intentions of pregnancy prevention efforts. Economic barriers such as lack of insurance and lack of Medicade providers make enhance the chance teens do not seek care because they may be unwilling to endure humiliation by asking what services are free and at reduced fees. (Moss 2004) Although there are many solutions to poverty stricken areas, many are not being taken advantage of. Organizations such as D.C. Hunger Solutions aim for these federally funded programs to be used widely. Programs such as Medicare, Food Stamps, and SCHIP go an extremely long way for many teenagers who cannot make ends meat. Medicare currently covers mothers and children living below the poverty line but will change to cover more people living below the poverty line in 2014 with the Affordable Care Act. As Education is a leading issue for African American youth in poverty, a leading solution should be aimed at changing education opportunities and outcomes for these adolescents. As previously mentioned, Peer Health Exchange uses a peer-to-peer model to educate 9th graders in DC public high schools through health workshops covering 11 different topics. Peer Health Exchange should expand the program, as a two-part system to juniors in high school. The leading reason students are not going to college is because students are not applying resulting from simple ignorance of opportunity. Many view college as too expensive and out of reach. These teenagers do not realize how much is in front of them. They simply do not know how many scholarships are up for grabs. Ideally, the second section of Peer Health Exchange will bridge this ignorance gap. Using the same model to connect with the teenagers, college students will not only help the teenagers find scholarships, but help them lay out plans on how to get them. In the introduction workshop 9th graders receive, they write down their goals for high school. Many of these goals run along the lines of doing well in school and ultimately graduating, receiving a diploma as the number one goal. Peer Health Exchange is still only in 6 cities, but they are focused in the cities that need it most. Benefits to this change include helping impoverished 17-year-olds overcome poverty on the path towards receiving an education. This will empower them to create new goals for the future that are realistic and provide ways for those goals to be reached. For example, educators will work one on one, peer to peer, to help a student find a scholarship that specifically suits them. On the other hand, this expansion runs the risk of being viewed as just another thing students have to participate in but seen as something they have to do instead of want to do. When a teenager is forced upon a class, they are much more likely to be skeptical and unmotivated to take the information to heart, acting on it in the future. In addition, primary cons to this policy change are costs associated with expanding including drafting another curriculum and training of a new department. Because it will be a new section in the program that has not been tested before, there will be obstacles that surface along the way. In the long run, the benefits will greatly outweigh the cons. Empowering black youth is the first step is changing their future.
1. Black Youth Project. N.p., 2013. Web. 24 Apr. 2013. .
2. Moss, Tamarah. "Serving Youth of Color." Transitions 15.3: n. pag. Print.
3. Portrait of Inequality 2011 - Black Children in America. N.p., 2011. Web. 23 Apr. 2013. .
4. Riegelman, Richard. "How Can Behaviors Be Changed." Public Health 101. N.p.: Michael Brown, 2009. 62-63. Print.
5. Winters, Loretta I. "Black Teenage Pregnancy." Sage Journals (2012): n. pag. Print.
with populations living in poverty, but also include populations such as the elderly and mentally ill. Vulnerable populations can exist in the middle and upper class as well but it is much less likely. The term “middle class” has become quite ambiguous. Merriam Webster defines the term as “a class occupying a position between the upper and lower class” but that marking point varies greatly across the country. Washington DC has one of the widest income gaps in the nation with the top fifth making on average 29 times as much as the lower fifth. This also accounts for Washington DC having the lowest poverty rate in the country with 8.4%, significantly lower than the nation’s average 15%. Take a look into Washington D.C.’s poorest areas, specifically into areas such as wards 7 and 8 and obstacles faced by these neighborhoods in poverty seem endless. Often times Washington DC is referred to as the “Chocolate City” because as it implies, the city is predominantly black with a solid 50% of the city’s population identifying as African American. Only recently, within the last few years, has this demographic slipped below 50 percent in 2011. Nonetheless, the African American population overshadows any other population in Washington because they are in fact still the majority. It dates back to the end of the civil war and the outpour began in the 1950s when living in the city was cheaper and living in the suburbs was more expensive and required a car. According to the U.S Department of Commerce State and County quick facts for 2011, White persons account for 78.1% of people nationwide while they make up about 42.4% of Washington DC. In comparison, black persons make up a mere 13.1% nationally and a whopping 50.7% in the district. Nearly one in five DC residents lives in poverty Taking a look at the youth in Washington DC as well, 72% of the population is black with only 10% of the population white. 70% of students in District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) are on free or reduced lunch. Although attendance rate is at a steady 95%, the graduation rate is only at 56%. Almost half of the students who are attending class everyday are not graduating. Something is clearly wrong here. 4 Free/reduced lunch is offered to students whose family are living below the poverty line, which is currently at $23,550 for a family of four. The picture below provides a snapshot of the poverty guidelines according to the size of a family in the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia.
[pic]
Children living in poverty have their childhoods ruined. In 2009 as many as one in five children were living in poverty accounting for 15.5 million children experiencing the steepest single rise in poverty since 1959. (Portrait of Inequality 2011). Teenagers growing up in poverty face much higher health risks on a daily basis. Damaging effects child abuse and early exposure to violence bring on can be detrimental to a child’s future. Poverty frays family bonds, leaving children with no family support and often left to face difficult obstacles on their own. Washington D.C.’s poorest neighborhoods are facing a serious crisis of hunger. In the capitol of the wealthiest nation, one in eight families struggle with hunger every day, and even when they can scape enough food to feed the family, a healthy option for dinner is rarely in reach. (D.C. Hunger Solutions) Theoretically, when a family doesn’t have enough money to eat enough, obesity is not on the radar. However, fast food and convenience stores completely changed that notion a few decades ago. These high-processed foods are sold at such low prices that most families living in poverty can afford to eat fast food every night. A diet of fast food combined with a lack of physical activity with no motivation to change behavior is a recipe for a child obesity disaster. The problem however is we cannot simply end this behavior by telling these families to eat cook healthier and buy organic produce when the nearest supermarket is miles out of reach and the local convenience stores offer little to no nutrition. This results in an access issue. Teenagers are living in a time where they just want to survive and whatever it is they need to make it to the next day or week is what is going to be habitual. Habitual behaviors are much harder to break. According to the Stages of Change Model, there are five steps towards behavioral change. Many teenagers living in poverty are stuck in the first three phases. The five stages are as follows: Pre-contemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, and Maintenance. Pre-contemplation implies that an individual has not yet considered changing a behavior. Contemplation implies that an individual is actively thinking of the benefits of a behavioral change. An individual in the Preparation stage has made the decision to change with a plan lay out but has not carried out any decision. Action stage is when the behavioral change takes place. The final phase, Maintenance is where the individual makes the behavioral change permanent. (Riegelman 2009) Many teens are either unaware of their vulnerability seeing their situation as a way of life with nothing they can do about it, or they have actively thought about getting out of poverty and are unsure how to achieve these goals. Others have a plan but numerous barriers of daily life become distracting and prevent these teenagers with such vulnerable minds from becoming successful. These barriers vary widely and are something as simple as time, something abusive such as violence, or something more abstract such as culture. Major determinants of health include socioeconomic status, the physical environment and a person’s individual characteristics and behaviors. Aside of resisting participation in risky behaviors, individuals are unlikely to be able to control many of the determinants of health. Education plays a large role in health because it is so vital for climbing out of poverty and a major determinant of health simply because of knowledge. Low levels of education are directly linked with poor health and more stress. Not only is an individual less at risk through more knowledge but also he/she is much more likely to employed at a higher paying job with a degree. With an education, so many more opportunities open for youth living in poverty. The biggest gap found with getting a degree is finding where to get it for a reduced price – with a scholarship. Considering black youth in Washington D.C.
are extremely vulnerable, it is even more vital for them to obtain access to health care, including primary care and vaccinations. Black youth in the Nation’s capitol face the worst odds for graduation rates, teen pregnancy, crime, obesity, gang activity, etc. Many programs in the district are aimed at reducing these odds through several mechanisms. Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington offers holistic approaches to give teens guidance. City Year works with youth ages 17 – 24 uniting D.C from all backgrounds for a full-year service giving them skills and opportunities. Volunteers of City Year serve as tutors, mentors, and role models to change the lives of impoverished children in the district. The stigma that most black men do not attend college is challenged with the organization, Concerned Black Men of Washington D.C. Their vision is to provide opportunities for academic and career achievement through mentors and programs that carry out the needs and discipline that all youth need. Close up foundation has been working in Washington D.C. for over four decades inspiring students to become informed active citizens. Members of the foundation include a national network of dedicated teachers, over 700,000 alumni and partners with varying funding such as the U.S Congress, the Department of Education, the Department of Interior, the Freedom Forum, Bank of America along with various others. Teachers hail from diverse racial, …show more content…
cultural, and economic backgrounds, enhancing the learning that is taking place inside these programs. Justice for D.C. Youth aims at providing a youth friendly environment for political climate. They seek equality through a fair juvenile justice system, as well as offer care for education, employment, aftercare, mental health, etc. Their mission is to mobilize and organize youth to serve as key members in the fight for justice in their communities. (Black Youth Project 2013) Peer Health Exchange is a national non-profit organization aimed at providing teenagers the knowledge and skills they need to make health decisions. These services are provided to 9th graders in public high schools that do not offer health education. The curriculum is a comprehensive set of health workshops. The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) as an initiative towards ending poverty, curbing obesity, and increase affordability of health care in low-income areas founded D.C. Hunger Solutions in 2002. The previously stated programs are merely a snap shot of the service provided for African American adolescents in the district. The main issue with carrying out these programs is that teens are unaware these programs exist. Aside from educating teens on risky behavior and how to get access to care, we need to start by educating these teens on where to find these resources first. More advertisement across the city is needed to bring these programs to the surface of adolescent’s attention. However, money does not grow on trees and funding is by far the biggest cost associated with serving the population. Word of mouth and networking verbally is vital because of the strained resources many of these organizations have, regardless of how much funding they are provided. Living in poverty, barriers to care come at every angle. Barriers include access to care, education, and socioeconomic status, along with a variety of additional cultural, economic and, social barriers. Access to managed care is very difficult for anyone living below the poverty line, especially for African American teens. Managed care provides opportunities to monitor the quality of care and provide patients with preventative services. Primary care can provide teen’s access to specialized care and leads to continuity of care and appropriate referral. It is crucial for a teenager to have a primary care provider in which they feel comfortable with to allow the teen to share personal information to ultimately get the best care. Primary care makes it much more likely for a teen to share information with one regular person rather than if they are always sharing their story with someone new each time and running the risk of a new health provider to pass judgment putting the teen on defense and limiting their confidence in health care, thus not receiving quality care and allowing the health care problem to persist. Although Managed care is ideal, there are many problems with this kind of care for teenagers. The biggest obstacle to overcome is seeking the care. Many challenges are involved with managed care including limits on services and benefits, a lack of trained physicians in adolescent health, and administrative systems that sometimes breach teen’s confidentiality and obstruct access to needed services. (Moss 2004) The Affordable Care Act will diminish limits such as lifetime caps on some on insurance plans, in 2014. Teens are not taken as seriously in the health care world so they often times get overlooked at. An analogy using adoption and foster care can be used to explain the situation; Most people want to adopt babies or small children but the older the kids get, they are more likely thrown into foster care which is much less regulated and many ulterior motives stem from foster care service parents. Foster care is also much less permanent usually only lasting a few years in relation to adoption, which is assumed, for life. Long waiting rooms where adolescents feel uncomfortable or unwelcome to walk in appointments discourage teens from seeking care. Even when a teen is scheduling an appointment, the available times are generally only during the school day when the student is in class and conflicts with the student’s schedule. Some of the toughest barriers to overcome are cultural.
Many first and second-generation youths of color have great difficulty with cultural barriers due to acculturation - the degree to which they assimilate the values beliefs and behaviors of the host culture. Sometimes they don't necessarily agree with the best care the doctor says there is because it conflicts with their values and beliefs on morally treating patients. The American health care system is not the most welcoming into open ideas about spirituality curing, its much more of a direct science approach that does not dismiss miracles but perceives such things as so unlikely that it might as well be
dismissed. Language offers a complex barrier. Translators must be available and equipped in health institutions when language becomes a barrier. Having a relative translate is unethical because they have a bias toward the patient and may withhold information or translate differently because they are not completely certified. Additionally it creates misunderstandings even when a translator is present because often times people rely on the same idioms for different languages that don't necessarily have the same meaning or a direct word of phrase that states the same thing in the native language. Discouraging youth can misinterpret the misunderstandings as their own fault, thus creating another emotional barrier in which the patient withholds information because of the lack of confidence with the doctor. (Moss 2004) If a patient feels judged they are much more likely not to tell the whole story to avoid any more judgment and feel the need to defend themselves by providing less information. This discourages the patient from going back to the physician and maybe even going to another physician in the fear that they will just be looked down upon instead of welcomed with open arms. A commonly overlooked barrier stems from communication patterns. These patterns of speech presuppose that all youth identify from a single gender perspective, share a cultural background and are heterosexual, creating immediate barriers to care for many young adults. (Moss 2004) Community memory plays a role in shaping barriers. A prime example is one of the Tuskegee Syphilis study in which rural African American men with syphilis were recruited to study the long-term effects of syphilis but told they were being tested for a possible cure and treatment. Due to ethical violations such as the Tuskegee study, African Americans have become suspicious of government agencies fearing intentions of pregnancy prevention efforts. Economic barriers such as lack of insurance and lack of Medicade providers make enhance the chance teens do not seek care because they may be unwilling to endure humiliation by asking what services are free and at reduced fees. (Moss 2004) Although there are many solutions to poverty stricken areas, many are not being taken advantage of. Organizations such as D.C. Hunger Solutions aim for these federally funded programs to be used widely. Programs such as Medicare, Food Stamps, and SCHIP go an extremely long way for many teenagers who cannot make ends meat. Medicare currently covers mothers and children living below the poverty line but will change to cover more people living below the poverty line in 2014 with the Affordable Care Act. As Education is a leading issue for African American youth in poverty, a leading solution should be aimed at changing education opportunities and outcomes for these adolescents. As previously mentioned, Peer Health Exchange uses a peer-to-peer model to educate 9th graders in DC public high schools through health workshops covering 11 different topics. Peer Health Exchange should expand the program, as a two-part system to juniors in high school. The leading reason students are not going to college is because students are not applying resulting from simple ignorance of opportunity. Many view college as too expensive and out of reach. These teenagers do not realize how much is in front of them. They simply do not know how many scholarships are up for grabs. Ideally, the second section of Peer Health Exchange will bridge this ignorance gap. Using the same model to connect with the teenagers, college students will not only help the teenagers find scholarships, but help them lay out plans on how to get them. In the introduction workshop 9th graders receive, they write down their goals for high school. Many of these goals run along the lines of doing well in school and ultimately graduating, receiving a diploma as the number one goal. Peer Health Exchange is still only in 6 cities, but they are focused in the cities that need it most. Benefits to this change include helping impoverished 17-year-olds overcome poverty on the path towards receiving an education. This will empower them to create new goals for the future that are realistic and provide ways for those goals to be reached. For example, educators will work one on one, peer to peer, to help a student find a scholarship that specifically suits them. On the other hand, this expansion runs the risk of being viewed as just another thing students have to participate in but seen as something they have to do instead of want to do. When a teenager is forced upon a class, they are much more likely to be skeptical and unmotivated to take the information to heart, acting on it in the future. In addition, primary cons to this policy change are costs associated with expanding including drafting another curriculum and training of a new department. Because it will be a new section in the program that has not been tested before, there will be obstacles that surface along the way. In the long run, the benefits will greatly outweigh the cons. Empowering black youth is the first step is changing their future.
1. Black Youth Project. N.p., 2013. Web. 24 Apr. 2013. .
2. Moss, Tamarah. "Serving Youth of Color." Transitions 15.3: n. pag. Print.
3. Portrait of Inequality 2011 - Black Children in America. N.p., 2011. Web. 23 Apr. 2013. .
4. Riegelman, Richard. "How Can Behaviors Be Changed." Public Health 101. N.p.: Michael Brown, 2009. 62-63. Print.
5. Winters, Loretta I. "Black Teenage Pregnancy." Sage Journals (2012): n. pag. Print.