Health Disparities

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Health Disparities

Introduction

Health disparities are defined as the preventable differences in the burden of injury, disease, violence, or the opportunities to achieve access to optimal health care that are found among the socially disadvantaged persons. The people can be discriminated against as either belonging to certain race, gender, geographic area, having certain educational or income backgrounds, having a disability, or even having certain sexual orientation. These health disparities are essentially inequitable and unjust and represent the unequal distribution of economic, political, social or other resources in the society. Furthermore, the reasons for health disparities are given as poverty, unequal access to health facilities, educational inequalities, environmental factors, and individual or societal factors (CDC, 2011).

In addition, health disparities are also defined as the differences in the health outcomes of various groups in the society and reflect social inequalities. Further, it is true that these health disparities are avoidable as well as correctable (Frieden, 2011). Moreover, it was also found that the governments have put all their efforts in improving the availability and quality of health care provided in the country as a direct result of these health disparities. Next, the variability causing health disparities in the United States and in other developing countries is not due to health care per se but represents the person's social status in the society (Barr, 2008).

Health disparities in the United States

Symptoms and results of health disparities

The various health disparities in the United States result in unequal health outcomes for disparate groups in the society. As a result, these various groups in the society exhibit different health conditions and afflictions as a direct consequence of health disparities. It is very important to gauge the different health outcomes of individuals and groups in the society so that preventive action could be taken to remove these health disparities.

It has been found that people belonging to lower social classes are less healthy compared to the people belonging to upper social classes. In addition, these lower social class people are unhealthy across the various states of the United States. In addition, the people living in the urban areas are more prone to disease and other health ramifications resulting from air and other pollution. Furthermore, the lower class people in this group will be affected more by the air pollution.

It was also found that infant mortality rates differed among races. The black women were expected to have very higher infant mortality rates due to health disparities compared to women from other races and ethnicities. Furthermore, men in the United States are more vulnerable to death by motor vehicle accidents when compared to women in the United States.

Another finding related to health disparities in the United States is that apart from Hispanic men, other men, especially the white men, are more expected to die of various drugs, especially the prescription drugs. Moreover, the most common health problem is that of coronary diseases and heart attacks or strokes. Further, the black population is more susceptible to getting ...