Healthcare is a basic need for all human beings despite their background, race, gender or social disposition. Despite this, the provision of healthcare is faced by discrimination of groups by social-economic status, race, mental health disabilities, sexual orientation, among other forms of discrimination. There is an urgent need to address healthcare disparity if healthcare needs are to be met for everyone.
As a nurse, my duty is to provide healthcare services to all citizens. Any other nurse or medical practitioner has such a duty too. However, sometimes others neglect them. For example, a homeless man who came to the hospital, who appeared to be an addict, was denied medical attention and was secluded from the hospital waiting room. He was taken out by hospital security on the grounds of disorderliness. Such a situation prompted me to think and realize that the homeless drug addict needed help just as anyone else does. I have taken an interest in issues of discrimination since.
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Identifying Academic Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
I searched google scholar for databases relating to healthcare. To find topic relevant peer-reviewed articles and journals, I used keywords such as health disparities, community health assessment, community health improvement plan, strategic planning, local health departments and health inequities. I added the keyword peer-reviewed to narrow my search to peer-reviewed articles. I also set the range of the publishing year to five years back.
Assessing Credibility and Relevance of Information Sources
The selected journals were published in the last five years by well-known healthcare researchers. By reading their abstracts first, I ascertained that the information I needed was contained in them. I also checked for the clarity of purpose in the objectives of the journals chosen.
Annotated Bibliography
Bourgois, P., Holmes, S., Sue, K., & Quesada, J. (2017). Structural Vulnerability. Academic Medicine , 92 (3), 299-307. https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0000000000001294
The paper proposes a rethink of traditional social history as a predeterminant of health outcomes in medicine. A noble idea of a medical vulnerability assessment questionnaire that considers the structural vulnerability of patients and the impediments to healthcare provisions thereafter is proposed. The paper proposes this tool for clinical applications and in medical education to help the critical and practical thinking of healthcare practitioners about healthcare disparities. The paper concludes that addressing healthcare disparities takes resources, and despite the decreased funding to healthcare, the structural vulnerability analysis tool might necessitate the provision of social services. The integration of the tool in education has positive long-term results by emancipating and giving more political responsibility to clinicians of fostering health equity. The paper is instrumental in giving ideas on proposed solutions in tackling the problem of healthcare disparities.
Shah, G., & Sheahan, J. (2016). Local Health Departments’ Activities to Address Health Disparities and Inequities: Are We Moving in the Right Direction? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health , 13 (1), 44. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph13010044
The paper analyses the activities that local healthcare departments undertake to address healthcare disparities. It further analyses the decline in such activities among healthcare departments relating it to infrastructural underdevelopment and poor administration. The paper begins by defining healthcare disparities and their existence in America, outlining the role the local health departments have in proactively identifying health discrepancies in their jurisdiction areas. The journal concludes that some health departments have reduced their efforts and activities in addressing healthcare disparities.
This is as a result of budgetary cuts and reduced hiring of staff coming from the minority communities. The choice of this paper was to get the scope and extent of healthcare disparities in America and to see if there were any mitigation efforts by authorities.
Suarez-Balcazar, Y., Mirza, M., & Garcia-Ramirez, M. (2017). Health disparities: Understanding and promoting healthy communities. Journal of Prevention & Intervention in The Community , 46 (1), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1080/10852352.2018.1386761
The paper realizes the need for global research in healthcare disparities, and since there is a rush by researchers to get to the root of the issue, it provides seven to help in understanding the matter of healthcare disparities. It also proposes the most ideal methods for ground research of healthcare disparities to better understand the matter. The paper concludes by recognizing the need for addressing healthcare disparities as it is now a global problem. As I will be doing research on healthcare disparities and equity, the pare acts as a pointer to my research work.
Zhang, X., Pérez-Stable, E., Bourne, P., Peprah, E., Duru, O., & Breen, N. et al. (2017). Big Data Science: Opportunities and Challenges to Address Minority Health and Health Disparities in the 21st Century. Ethnicity & Disease , 27 (2), 95. https://doi.org/10.18865/ed.27.2.95
The paper recognizes the plight of the underrepresented and understudied population and the healthcare disparities they face as a result. Due to the ongoing advancements in big data collection in healthcare, the researchers propose a new dimension in data collection that incorporates geographical and social factors to better understand and address healthcare disparities by leveraging big data power. Further, the paper outlines the opportunities and challenges in implementing big data among minority populations, emphasizing the need to get it right. It concludes by stating that big data can solve the healthcare disparities among underserved populations. However, warning that if misused, it could further widen the healthcare disparity problem. The paper is resourceful in that it proposes the use of new technologies and shows their benefits and dangers in solving healthcare disparities.
Lessons from the Research
After collecting the peer-reviewed journals, I internalized more information about healthcare disparities. The journals made me have a bigger scope of the problem, and one article (Suarez-Balcazar et al., 2017) gave me pointers to guide my research. (Zhang et al., 2017) taught me the technological possibilities in addressing healthcare inequality.
References
Bourgois, P., Holmes, S., Sue, K., & Quesada, J. (2017). Structural Vulnerability. Academic Medicine , 92 (3), 299-307. https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0000000000001294
Shah, G., & Sheahan, J. (2016). Local Health Departments’ Activities to Address Health Disparities and Inequities: Are We Moving in the Right Direction? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health , 13 (1), 44. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph13010044
Suarez-Balcazar, Y., Mirza, M., & Garcia-Ramirez, M. (2017). Health disparities: Understanding and promoting healthy communities. Journal of Prevention & Intervention in The Community , 46 (1), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1080/10852352.2018.1386761
Zhang, X., Pérez-Stable, E., Bourne, P., Peprah, E., Duru, O., & Breen, N. et al. (2017). Big Data Science: Opportunities and Challenges to Address Minority Health and Health Disparities in the 21st Century. Ethnicity & Disease , 27 (2), 95. https://doi.org/10.18865/ed.27.2.95
