Health Disparities
While it is the duty of the nurse to ensure that health services are accessible to all patient populations, advancing of health equity agenda has faced various challenges. For instance, there are racial-based inequalities that people face in their access to health. The perception of the US as a post racial country is inaccurate (Anderson, 2012). Therefore, two general approaches can be employed to reduce inequalities in access to health services. Health disparities emerge when certain groups of people enjoy better health services and access to health than others. This often reflects in differences in death rates among various populations that make up the United States. Disparities are mainly brought about by inequalities in people’s levels of income across the entire population. For instance, poor blacks may face the challenge of accessing better health services than middle class whites. Nurses can play a major role in examining and investigating health inequalities through a process referred to as selection. Selection can be described as the tendency that individuals have to group themselves in terms of their residential places, social gatherings, and other forms of clustering. For instance, individuals who like to engage in physical activities are most likely to reside in areas where they can walk, whereas those who like to isolate themselves or stay indoors often opt for auto-reliant estates. This plays a major role in the differences in health among members who belong to varying levels of income. For instance, those who are rich and live sedentary lifestyles are most likely to face cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and diabetes compared to their counterparts in poor neighborhoods who have to walk for long distances. This phenomenon is in some situations viewed as an explanation for academic, professional, or ethnic disparities in health. For instance, some scholars may seek to understand the interrelationships between socioeconomic status as an outcome of selection by asserting that genetically superior people are most likely to enjoy better health and high Intelligence Quotient. This suggests why most intellectuals and those who have high socioeconomic status are healthier. However, my observation is that geographical factors can play a major role in increasing health inequalities in the country. This can be viewed in terms of the contextual and compositional impacts. Contextual issues often affect a neighborhood whereas compositional factors are basically representative of the nature of people in terms o their surroundings or other contexts. For instance, in case a specialized healthcare institution attracts high number or chronically ill occupants of a particular neighborhood, the poor health status of these neighborhoods in comparison to immediate surroundings can be compositional.
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