Community Engagement Exercise (Essay Sample)

Name:
Institution:
Community Engagement Exercise
Proposal
At the Community Engagement event, we plan to screen the film, Is Inequality making Us Sick to the public at the local community auditorium. Our interest in the film is in the message that it puts across about the paradox in the American society. The film discusses the peculiar state of health in the society where the poor population is healthier compared to the rich. With specific reference to the Latino Americans, the film dwells on the state of health for this group in relation to that of Americans. This event is therefore ethnically sensitive, making it important that the audience should comprise of people from different ethnic backgrounds. The relevance of having people of different ethnicity is to have an interactive session after the screening, since it may be necessary that lessons within the film should be reflected upon in practice rather than in theory.
This event is to be held in the Century Auditorium on the first Saturday after Easter. We will use posters and door-to-door messaging to get word to the public. It is expected that most of this publicity will reach our audience through word of mouth. During the event, the audience will be given a handout to guide them through the program and to provide additional information on the screened segment.
Is Inequality Making Us Sick?
Is wealth an indication of better health? Does being poor mean people are more vulnerable to diseases? These are among the questions that most people will answer in the affirmative. The Unnatural Causes segment of Is Inequality Making Us Sick however discusses this issue to prove the contrary. The American society is a diverse collection of people with different ethnicities and considerable differences in financial status. America as often believed by foreigners is a land of opportunities. Immigrants are often enticed by the mainstream media to believe that they stand a greater chance of succeeding in life once they set foot in America. However, in most cases, it becomes an impossible goal for these people achieve their life aspirations in America. Therefore, in most cases such as that of Amador Bernal, an immigrant from Mexico, their lives are often not transformed as they would expect. They are therefore forced to occupy the lower niche in the society, described as poor. However, with their poverty, the fact is that these people in the American society are less likely to fall sick than typical Americans are.
Research attributes this strange case to the differences in lifestyles of these two groups. Immigrants, especially from Mexico dwell in more tightly knit families where the role of each family member is important. People such as Bernal are therefore less likely to fall sick because of these strong cohesive bonds that are absent in many American families (Rodriguez 6:39). Through these family and community ties, Latino immigrants are resistant to the American culture that is more individualistic. It would be expected that because the immigrants are poorer, they should be more susceptible to diseases and sicknesses. The American family is however more vulnerable because of poor lifestyles. Too much time spent at work away from the family and the increasingly diminishing physical contact among individuals through invasion of the traditional socializing avenues such as face-to-face conversations by technology affect the health of Americans. Americans are therefore more disconnected from each other, contributing to social isolation, which can kill (Rodriguez 9:35).
The strong point in this screening is the fact that the poor are not necessarily the unhealthy lot of the different classes in the society. It is baffling that with the comfortable lifestyles that most Americans live, they have a higher chance of getting sick than the poor immigrant with little resources to safeguard their health. Having considered this fact, there is however a different face to sickness and inequality. Latino immigrants do not hold this advan...