Racial and ethnic health

Race and Ethnic Health Disparities

Race and ethnic health disparities are frequently linked to inadequate health care and poor health outcomes. Cultural and linguistic barriers have a significant impact on disparities if they are not adequately handled by health care organizations. Because a nation’s diversity grows steadily over time, health care facilities are seeing an increase in patients with cultural and ethnic obstacles. The diversity of cultures, languages, and dialects has become a significant barrier for health care facilities and their workers. The facilities are expected to develop a framework that would allow them to adopt methods that will mitigate the associated issues. Moreover, there isn’t a one-way solution as different scenarios need unique practices to solve them resulting to individual roadmaps implementation to solve the challenges in various hospitals.

Tailored Initiatives to Meet the Needs

There is need to innovate tailored initiatives to meet the needs that are arising from the diverse populations. Themes are supposed to be developed based on the hospital, language and culture to come up with solutions to the arising challenges. Application of a self-assessment tool involves the patients in the discussion about their needs, goals, and resources that are required to achieve quality care for the patients in a health care facility (Gordon, Page & Popkin, 2006). The tool will be intended to solve the main issues in a diverse population and designed to promote the discussions concerning the need to improve the existing culture and language services.

Attitudes and Beliefs of Different Ethnic and Racial Groups

Different ethnic and racial groups possess different attitudes and beliefs concerning medicines and health affecting their adherence to the therapies administered to them. Any slight failure in considering the differences may lead to detrimental issues in communication and understanding regarding the health care. Different cultures possess a diverse range of beliefs when it comes to diseases, treatment, and health and health care providers. Therefore, people from several immigrant cultures bring with them the different beliefs that require different practices as far as healthcare is concerned. Due to this fact, there is a challenge to the health care professionals as they must look for mans to equip themselves with training skills in philosophy concepts to counter the effects. Moreover, some people may belong to the same cultural group, but they don’t have homogenous beliefs even though they may hold several practices that are common (Suther & Sandel, 2013). It implies that materials and messages are required to be designed in a manner that respects the variations existing within the cultural groups. There are major areas that may lead to differences between the groups, which may involve adherence to the customs, preferred language, sexual orientation, and the health status.

The Impact of Health Promotion and Wellness Initiative

The current health promotion and wellness initiative has a great impact on health disparities and outcomes. Application of the “health in all policies” has led to a tremendous improvement for the patients and it has aided to close the loopholes to minimize the outcomes of different disparities in the society. Moreover, the use of Health Impact Assessments has supported in the review of the existing social policies to impact positively in the health sector.

Strategies to Solve the Challenges

Health Impact Assessments, application of health in all policies, and equipping the health practitioners with training skills in philosophy concepts is a very powerful strategy to solve the challenges of racial and ethnic health disparities. The strategies provide a framework for intervention that will address the barriers to disease prevention and health promotion in a diverse population. The social and cultural norms concerning the health behaviors are addressed fully to ensure smooth delivery of services.

Mapping and Place-Based Approaches

Through mapping and place-based approaches, the social and cultural needs are assessed to impact on the individual and community health. It has led to a variety of initiatives that focus to offer solutions to environmental, social and economic barriers that are the main factors resulting in health disparities and poor health outcomes. The approach helps in focusing on localism to exploit all the health gaps that may exist in the community to harness quality delivery of services.

The Approach of Health in All Policies

The approach of health in all policies identifies the importance of addressing the social health determinants to improve the health of the population aiding the decision-making process to be informed concerning the equity, health, and sustainability (Lock, 2000). The approach helps in the identification of scenarios whereby decisions are needed in multiple areas of the health sector and improves the support of the objectives of the sector. Moreover, diverse partners and stakeholders are engaged to partner in improving the health issues to achieve an improved education attainment.

Multifaceted Approach to Address Health Barriers

Through the application of a multifaceted approach in the sector, health promotion barriers will be addressed in the local community improving the delivery of the quality care to the population. Moreover, elimination of ethnic and racial disparities will be harnessed. The approaches will provide a practical framework for intervention to restructure the health systems to be more responsive to the diverse population’s requirements providing health care education to address the related barriers to the health promotion. Therefore, the cultural and social norms that engulf the health sector and the disparities will be addressed effectively.

References

Gordon-Larsen, P., Page, P., & Popkin, B. M. (2006). Inequality in the built environment underlies key health disparities in physical activity and obesity. Pediatrics, 117(2), 417-424.

Lock, K. (2000). Health impact assessment. British Medical Journal, 320(7246), 1395.

Suther, E. M. I. L. Y., & Sandel, M. E. G. A. N. (2013). Health impact assessments. RI Med J, 96, 27-30.