Understanding the Causes of Health Disparities

 Understanding the Causes of Health Disparities

Health inequality relates to variations of status and quality of health that different groups of the population receive. These inequalities are usually noted along the lines of race, ethnicity, social class, geographical position, gender, among others. It is also important to establish the reasons behind the occurrence of health disparities to be in a position to rectify them and enhance the health of whole of populations. This blog is dedicated to discussing the reasons for health inequalities, which can be related to sociostructurally, institutional, and personal factors.

1. Social Determinants of Health

Determinants of health are the person’s place of origin, environment they live in, their workplace and their stage in life. They all affect health status and are integral to the inequalities in health experienced in the society. Key social determinants include:

1. Socioeconomic Status

Socioeconomic status or socioeconomic class again includes income, education and occupation. In this case, individuals with low SES exposure obtain worse health due to poor treatment, unaffordable, and quality foods, and unsafe housing.

– Income: Poverty limits one’s ability to pay for proper health care and this means that they withhold their health status in search of a proper doctor and thus keeps developing untreated ailments.

– Education: This reveals that people with less education have poor health literacy which compromises his/her potential to make proper health decisions.

– Occupation: Lower wage jobs also have higher risk ratings and provide less exposure to life threatening situations and access to medical insurance facilities.

1. Education

It was found that improved educational levels led to better health literacy, which determine a man capacity to act on health information. Poor education can hinder a patient’s capacity to understand how the health sector operates and adhere to the prescribed treatment plan.

– Health Literacy: Lack of education makes it difficult for people to comprehend what doctors tell them, or the instructions they are given, health information, and other related factors affecting their health.

– Health Behaviors: Education affects health practices and their decision-making processes related to health habits such as use of cigarettes, eating habits, and exercise regimens.

1. Housing and Environment

Shelter and environment factors are defining aspects that have a direct impact on health. Primarily, it has been a fact that the living shelter or the housing conditions can decide the health problems of the inhabitants.

– Housing Quality: Living in a substandard housing increases the chances of falling ill, developing respiratory disease from mold, being exposed to lead, and being more prone to getting injured.

– Neighborhood Safety: Due to the high crime rates, the community members cannot engage in vigorous exercises, and the anxiety levels are always high due to insecurity in their neighborhoods.

1. Access to Healthcare

Health care services are considered as the fundamental necessities of life due to their significance in influencing the well-being of the people. Stakeholders are also deprived of the necessary healthcare they need, and this causes disparities in health.

– Healthcare Coverage: Being uninsured, people are less likely to get treatments they may need due to the costs which would easily translate into more incidences of diseases that could otherwise are be prevented.

– Healthcare Availability: Sometimes, the existence of a few healthcare practitioners and shortage in numbers of such practitioners particularly in the rural or other healthcare deficient regions can also pose a hindrance to TC.

2. Systemic and Institutional Factors

Systemic and institutional are terms having to do with the conditions in the larger society and the large organizations that exist in any society. These include:

1. Discrimination and Bias

Sexual minority populations this way experience discrimination and bias within the health care systems hence receive different treatment and of different quality than others.

– Racial and Ethnic Discrimination: Prejudice might lie within race and ethnicity hence leading to disparities in the healthcare services delivery, wrong diagnosis, and poor management.

– Gender and LGBTQ+ Discrimination: Members of the female sex and people of the queer community can be discriminated against and hence access inferior and unequal healthcare.

1. Healthcare Policies

Governance policies and laws influences health disparities in the society in a very special way. The equally clear is that unequal policies will always lead to amplification of these differences.

– Policy Implementation: Failure in the proper and effective adoption of policies that seek to eliminate the disparities leads to consequences such as acquisition of equal facilities for provision of equal services.

– Healthcare Reform: Healthcare policy and reform involves changes in policies and reforms that affects the population by either increasing or reduce the access by various groups to healthcare services.

1. Social Inequities

This is mainly so because income and wealth are measures of social disparities and these in turn determine health care delivery and access to health care facilities.

– Income Inequality: More employment income disparity hence means more disparities in health, education as well as living standards.

– Wealth Disparities: This is because wealth inequality translates to the inequality in the ways people can access healthy products and services due to the limitations of resources.

3. Environmental and Geographic Factors

Demographic and geographic factors can thus change the equity in health since certain areas can lack basic health care and other necessities, as well as exposing populations to new health risks.

1. Geographic Location

It has been revealed in many instances that location matters when it comes to healthcare services, the quality of care that is available to patients, as well as the health status of the population.

– Rural vs. Urban Areas: Some of the issues that residents in rural regions may experience include; shortage, less density of health providers, limited access to other health facilities and distance to a health facility.

– Health Infrastructure: It can be seen that there exist disparities in the health care system in relation to the availability and accessibility of proper health care.

1. Environmental Exposures

External conditions can cause health differences since environmental factors affect the health of people in certain regions.

– Pollution: Advanced cases of pollution may cause complications of the respiratory or the cardiovascular, targeting the low-income or the minority populace.

– Access to Green Spaces: This has the effect of decreasing the amount of physical exercise the population can engage in and more negatively affects mental health due to lack of access to parks and other recreational facilities.

4. Cultural and Behavioral Factors

Besides primary genetic and physiological factors, culture and behaviors that people implement dictate their health status and thus health inequalities.

1. Cultural attitude towards sex, Gender and Marriage

Culture encompasses attitudes and customs that shape one’s perception, which influences the choice of practices in relation to health, medication intake, and communications with health professionals.

– Health Beliefs: Culture has a way of approaching health and illness and this may determine the way the people will seek and use health care services.

– Traditional Practices: The use of conventional or non-conventional medicine may deter compliance to conventional medicine.

1. Health Behaviors

Lifestyle factors affecting health and wellness include matters like feeding habits, exercise regime, and substance use, among others, can also help cause health disparities.

– Diet and Nutrition: The availability of health foods and information about the food can influence the food preferences and a person’s well-being.

– Physical Activity: Exercise and participation in sports or exercise programme can also produce variance in health events.

5. Biological and Genetic Factors

Unfortunately, health disparities can also result from biological/genetic influences as well, although these correlates are typically less susceptible to change compared to the social/system factors.

1. Genetic Predispositions

Genetic susceptibilities may raise predispositions to some diseases within distinct groups of people.

– Genetic Conditions: There are certain coping genetic disorders that are associated with specific ethnic or racial groups affecting the health of such people.

– Susceptibility to Diseases: It is a DNA variation that influences an individual’s risk of the diseases including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases or cancer.

1. Physiological Differences

The internal and external characteristics of a person or a group of people play a role in his or their health status.

– Metabolism: Genetic differences influence the metabolism rate and patient’s response towards the medications and hence affect the health and treatment.

– Disease Progression: Paths to a disease, the effectiveness of the applied treatment, and so on, can also explain why some groups have poorer health than others.

Addressing Health Disparities

Strengthening health-speaking different levels of people involves a multilevel program that includes individuals, communities, healthcare providers, and policymakers. Here are some strategies to address health disparities:

1. Policy Changes

This includes policies that enhance health equity and Social Determinants of health affecting people’s health.

– Healthcare Access: Up-scaled provision of health care services to the population segment that hardly receives any quality health care service.

– Education and Employment: Increase the access to the quality education as well as the employment opportunities that would help to narrow down the gap between the rich and the poor.

1. Community Engagement

These policies suggest that involving communities in health promotion and disease prevention activities may be useful for closing the gap of health disparities in a given community.

– Community Programs: Administer and foster growth of identified community health concerns/interests and health disparities/inequities.

– Cultural Competency: Health care organization should make sure that their providers’ cultural beliefs are adopted and that they are aware of the needs of different cultures.

1. Education and Awareness

Developing consciousness of different health problems as well as offering knowledge concerning health literacy could facilitate in encouraging people to be in charge of their healthcare.

– Health Education: Engage in health promotion that includes services for different groups and endeavors to enhance health literacy.

– Public Awareness Campaigns: It is essential to launch informative public campaigns to draw people’s attention to the problem of health inequalities and the need to fight for health equity.

https://www.cdc.gov/

Conclusion

Disparities in health means that population groups are not getting equal and fair quality treatment or attention, and this an issue that leans on social injustice which is a combination of social, systemic, environment and culture and biology. It is crucial to grasp why there are significant differences in health between different populations in order to be able to define the strategies of their elimination and the work towards health equality. It is now possible to eliminate the conditions that cause inequality and implement effective measures in order to minimize prejudice and increase the rates, essential for the health of all people.