Racism In Healthcare

Kaylan Gutierrez

Professor Joseph Furlong

Writing & Humanities

May 11,2022

 

   The healthcare systems of many countries, including the United States, are prevalent with racial bias. As a result, patients and healthcare workers alike suffer, with higher risks of illness and, in certain cases, lower levels of treatment for people of color (POC).  Racial disparities in medical care must be interpreted in the light of socioeconomic disparities. There are many things that play into factor in racial Inequality involving health like the impacts of  Racial discrimination that are widespread and deeply rooted in our neighborhoods and communities , affecting where people live, learn, work, pray, and eat, as well as producing inequality in access to a wide range of social and economic benefits, including health.  

 

The Article Disparities In Health and Health Care By Nambi Ndugga and Samantha Artiga that I will be analyzing and referring to emphasizes that when thinking of racism in the healthcare system people immediately resonate it with being related to doctors,clinics,  and in a medical setting. However, this may be the situation sometimes it is not always the same case.  Obesity disparities may be worsened by differential availability to harmful foods in poor or minority neighborhoods. Obesity is more common among African Americans in the United States than among whites. Hispanics are in the same boat.  It is a public health issue for the rest of us. Obesity is on the rise in the United States, and one of the main causes is poverty, which is especially prevalent in minority populations. In many American cities, bodegas provide meals in the form of chips and drinks to low-income residents who do not have access to local supermarkets. Fast food can be beneficial  for those who don’t have much money or options.  These meals, however, represent one of the country’s most serious public health concerns. Fast food, which is high in fat and sugar, is a major contributor to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. This all comes back to the Inequality in health care because on top of being treated better in a medical setting you see less white people than poc in the hospital/clinic with these issues because there are healthier alternatives in their communities.

 

  According to the CDC article Racism and Health,  It is stated that when compared to their White counterparts, racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States have greater rates of sickness and death across a wide variety of health issues, including diabetes, hypertension, obesity, asthma, and heart disease. Furthermore, non-Hispanic/Black Americans have a four-year shorter life expectancy than White Americans. Another dramatic example of these lasting health inequities is the COVID-19 epidemic and its disproportionate impact on racial and ethnic minority communities. This relates and adds to my main article because the data from the graph shown in the article that when number of health status was measured for Black, American Indian, Alaska Native, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, and White from better , worse, or the same from white counter parts, the minorities had the most orange meaning (worse) (Nambi Ndugga and Samantha Artiga).

 

Furthermore the article  Examining the Impact of Structural Racism on Food Insecurity: Implications for Addressing Racial/Ethnic Disparities by Angela M. Odoms-Young,  a PhD, Associate Professor examines an analysis that presents trends in the food industry from 2001 to 2016. In this Analysis you can see that food insecurity was at least twice as high in non-Hispanic black and Hispanic households as it was in non-Hispanic white households.  The link between race/ethnicity and food insecurity is complicated, and it is clearly linked with other well-known drivers of food insecurity, such as poverty, unemployment, incarceration, and disability. Food insecurity is clearly driven by the concentration of social and economic disadvantage among people of color over the course of their lives. This article also states “Substantial gaps in the wealth of people of color and whites have long existed in the U.S. For example, recent data reported by the Pew Research Center indicate that the wealth of white households was 13 times the median wealth of black and 10 times greater than Hispanic households”.  When referring to my main article this adds on to where the article states that disparities in other factors are also documented in research. Low-income persons, for example, have a worse health status than better-income people,7 and lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people face particular health difficulties at higher rates. (Nambi Ndugga and Samantha Artiga)

 

A significant portion of the disparity in access to health care is due to racial and ethnic variations in health insurance coverage rates. In the United States, African Americans and Hispanics are more likely than non-Hispanics to be uninsured throughout their adult lives.  People without health insurance confront significant challenges in receiving care. In the article Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Insurance Coverage: Dynamics of Gaining and Losing Coverage Over the Life-Course by Heeju Son he states that “The African American and Hispanic population has a greater prevalence of trigger events and socioeconomic characteristics that are associated with greater insurance loss and slower insurance gain”. Adding on that In the United States, private health insurance coverage is linked to job and marriage. Minorities face discrimination in both sectors. When compared to their non-Hispanic white colleagues, African American men and women have greater unemployment rates. In the main article figure 3 supports this article’s statement because In the data it shows that The Affordable Care Act’s health-care expansions resulted in significant increases in coverage for all categories. Despite these increases, people of color and those with low incomes continue to be at higher risk of being uninsured by showing the increases and decreases on the graph.  (Nambi Ndugga and Samantha Artiga)

 

Covid 19 has had a huge impact on the lives of many people. Many people have gotten infected, hospitals have been filled to the max, tons of people have died. Where does racial disparity play a role in this ? In the article Assessment of Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Hospitalization and Mortality in Patients With COVID-19 in New York City by Gbenga Ogedegbe, Joseph Ravenell, and  Samrachana Adhikari. They state that “  Black and Hispanic populations have higher coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)–related hospitalization and mortality than White populations”.  The article emphasizes that increased illness severity is due to restricted access to health care, delay in seeking care3, or receipt of care in low-resource settings could explain racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-related mortality. And that another explanation could be that Black and Hispanic populations have greater rates of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and chronic kidney disease (CKD), all of which worsen outcomes. This can be referred  back to my main article because in the data and explanation for figure 4 it depicts how people of color had higher rates of cases, hospitalizations, and death than white people and additionally In the United States in 2020, IAN, Black, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI), and Hispanic individuals had over three times the rate of premature excess deaths per 100,000 persons as White or Asian people.  (Nambi Ndugga and Samantha Artiga)

 

In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines are crucial. At the same time, in the United States, ongoing racial injustices put disadvantaged populations at risk of vaccination inequities. COVID-19 has had a disproportionately negative impact on ethnic minorities, so this is critical. As the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently stated, racial disparities in COVID-19 immunization rates are a classic example of racism’s “serious threat to public health.” Previous research has discovered significant racial differences in vaccination rates for a variety of diseases, with Blacks and Whites having the longest-lasting variances. In the article Socioeconomic privilege and political ideology are associated with racial disparity in COVID-19 vaccination by Ritu Agarwa Michelle Dugas Jui Ramaprasad , Junjie Luo , Gujie Li, and Guodong (Gordon) Gao they state that ‘nearly half of the US adult population was at least partially vaccinated, but  associations were found  between racial disparities in COVID-19 vaccination and median income (negative), disparity in high school education (positive), and vote share for the Republican party in the 2020 presidential election (negative), while vaccine hesitancy is not related to disparities”. This can add on and support my main article because in the article and graph of figure 5 it shows that In comparison to their White counterparts, Black and Hispanic persons receive fewer shares of immunizations as compared to their shares of cases, deaths, and the total population, resulting in lower vaccination rates. While immunization rates are rising across the board, disparities between Black and Hispanic persons continue to exist. ((Nambi Ndugga and Samantha Artiga)

Analyzing each of these articles and referring back to my initial article The Article Disparities In Health and Health Care By Nambi Ndugga and Samantha Artiga. I was able to defend my thesis by expanding on different scenarios where an individual could be facing racial inequality in health but not always necessarily in a clinical setting. Through using each article I could expand on my thesis and main article by showing how the other articles connect or add on to my thesis and the article I am mainly analyzing. 

 

Reflection

 

Throughout the multiple essays I’ve written in this class a problem I have faced is not making my thesis statements repetitive. Therefore how I thought about refining my thesis statement throughout my research journey is by cutting down the big topic “Racial Discrimination” into multiple little topics that I can expand on so that the reader isn’t reading repetitive information and can learn about the different aspects of racial inequality in different situations. At first  I did have trouble finding some information because I could not find sources that I thought were reliable and had sufficient evidence to support my argument on the regular google site. However when I used Google scholar and the ccny website more scholarly and reliable sources popped up that I thought were good enough to use. There were multiple sources I tended to disregard when conducting my research and those were the sources that were very short because I felt like it did not give me enough or valid information. I also tended to avoid sources from wikipedia because not all information is factual. And lastly sources that were in a weird format or font because they were more difficult to read. A problem I encountered when analyzing my text was having a big paragraph of information in front of me and not knowing how to differentiate in terms of should I use this or not. I solved this by searching for key points in each paragraph and underlining them. The sources I used supported my thesis and argument because my thesis is that Racial disparities in medical care must be interpreted in the light of socioeconomic disparities. There are many things that play into factor in racial Inequality involving health like the impacts of  Racial discrimination that are widespread and deeply rooted in our neighborhoods and communities , affecting where people live, learn, work, pray, and eat, as well as producing inequality in access to a wide range of social and economic benefits, including health.  Therefore my sources each included a factor that was one of the many factors in my main article that I was analyzing.

 

Works Cited:

Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Hospitalization and Mortality in Patients With COVID-19 in New York City, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/article-abstract/2773538, JAMA Network Open, May 11, 2022, December 04, 2020

 

Socioeconomic privilege and political ideology are … – pnas.org, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2107873118 , May 11,2022

 

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Insurance Coverage: Dynamics of Gaining and Losing Coverage Over the Life-Course – Population Research and Policy Review, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11113-016-9416-y#Sec2

SpringerLink, May 11 2022, October 15, 2016

 

Racism and Health, https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/racism-disparities/index.html, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 11, 2022, November 24, 2021

 

Disparities in Health and Health Care: 5 Key Questions and Answers,https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/disparities-in-health-and-health-care-5-key-question-and-answers/ , KFF, May 11, 2022, May 12 2021

 

Examining the Impact of Structural Racism on Food Insecurity: Implications for Addressing Racial/Ethnic Disparities

, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5823283/ , Family & community health, May 11 2022