Disparities in Healthcare: Centers for Disease Control (Essay Sample)

Disparities in Healthcare
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Introduction
Health disparities refer to the inequalities which occur in the healthcare provision and accessing of health care services across different socioeconomic, racial and ethnic groups. It is also known as the specific differences of a population in the presence of outcomes of health, disease, or access to healthcare. It’s is well known in America that the problem of health disparities mostly affects ethnic minorities such as Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos. It has been shown through studies by the health resource and services administration that such above groups are affected more by chronic conditions, mortality and poor health outcomes as compared to the white people. Like, for example, the cancer rate among African Americans is 10% more than in white people and that Latinos and African Americans are more twice likely than white people to develop diabetes (KRONENFELD, 2008). This paper thus discusses in many further details the reasons why healthcare disparities matter, its status today and the key initiatives that are in place to address disparities in healthcare.
Health disparities need to be addressed from different points of view in an effort to achieve quality care and population growth (Good et al, 2005). Disparities are costly thus resulting to lost productivity in work, premature deaths and increased unnecessary costs in health care. This leads to the economy losing lots of funds due to the increased indirect and direct costs of the disparities.
Over the time, the population is becoming diverse. It is estimated that people of color will be more than half of the total population by 2050 (Good et al, 2005).the largest growth is expected to be of the Hispanics. The gaps between the rich and the poor are also increasing. The widening gap shows the necessity of heath care disparities before things worsen. The risk of being in secured is also high (Good et al, 2005). Most people are uninsured especially the low-income ones. The none-elderly adults are also highly risked of being uninsured compared to the children. The place where a person is living also impacts the likelihood of a person being covered. The rates of UN insecurity vary from state to state which increases that need for the disparities to be addressed.
Vulnerable populations are facing increased barriers in accessing healthcare and receive very poor quality care the time they get it. In reports on the healthcare quality and disparities, Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) found that the low-income individuals and the people of color do experience more barriers to health care and do receive poor quality care. Moreover, other researches show that the individuals with low English proficiency are very less likely compared with the ones who are English proficient in terms of seeking healthcare even when they are insured. Research too finds very differing experiences of patients and levels of satisfaction by gender, race, education levels, and language (Good et al, 2005).
Several initiates have been put in place to get rid of the health disparities in the United States and other countries. Some of these measures include; Legislations which have been put in place to end this menace about a decade ago. A good of example of such legislations is the Research and Education Act of 2000 which gave room for the creation of National Centre for Minority of Health and Health Disparities as well as the authorized AHRQ to measure the progress on elimination of these disparities (Thomas et al, 2013). National awareness boosted by the report released by Institute of Medicine which released two reports documenting racial and ethnic disparities has increased among the general public and all levels of government.
An action plan developed by the department of Health and Human Services on Elimination of racial and ethnic et al health disparities boosted the efforts of the US government to eliminate health disparities. The initiative main objective was to achieve health equity as well as eliminate disparities geared towards improving the health of all groups. This plan was developed as part of initiatives to achieve 2020 health goals (Thomas et al, 2013).HHS was in a position to identify key initiatives and programs providing funding for community –based interventions as well as the establishment of standards for culturally as well Linguistically Appropriate Services to ensure all people receive healthcare in a culturally and also linguistically appropriate manner.
An initiative funded by the Centers for Disease Control that is the Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) have implemented community –based interventions to get rid of specific neighborhood â€&ld...