Instructions Instructions Please respond to all 6 discussion separately/INDIVIDUALLY. Please divide the words equally between the 6 responses. Discussion #1Health disparities are preventable differences in the disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health experienced by socially disadvantaged racial, ethnic, and other population groups, and communities Contributing factors can be the location of their home with the availability of medical facilities. There are Native Americans within South Dakota who have to travel over 100 miles to get to a facility to receive treatment. Also if any of them need dialysis they have transportation difficulties with numerous of them not having cars. This is also a problem with getting emergency care when ambulances are not available or when ambulances are used as taxi services. In the state of South Dakota Native Americans are 39% more likely to have diabetes than the white race and according to the Medicaid study, they are 52% more likely not to have transportation to appointments.
The South Dakota Department of Health in 2018 started a program to have CHRs (community health representatives) on the reservation to help with transportation and for health education, this has now been expanded to the reservation in Community Health Care Workers. The goal of this program is to help the individuals who are falling between the cracks and are not getting the healthcare they need.
https://healthequitytracker.org/
dss.sd.gov
CHWsd.org
Discussion #2
Are disparities challenging to talk about?
Hi all. As healthcare professionals, I think one of the most important thing is to recognize and talk about the fact that disparities really do exist.
I know in my own career at times I have not wanted to talk about disparities, as I was afraid if I was doing something like openly talking about healthcare differences between White people and Black people, that someone might think I was rude or even worse racist. I was also scared to talk about poor people vs wealthy people, and obese people vs. lean people. All of these topics scare me a little bit as I don’t know what people will think if I bring up these topics.
That makes these topics so hard to solve, if we can’t talk about them, doesn’t it?
Discussion #3Good Morning,
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines health disparities as preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health that are experienced by socially disadvantaged populations. Disadvantaged populations can be defined by factors such as race or ethnicity, gender, education or income, disability, geographic location (e.g., rural or urban), or sexual orientation (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention., 2020, November 24).
Health disparities are unjust and are directly related to the unequal distribution of social, political, economic, and environmental resources. Health disparities result from multiple factors, including poverty, environmental threats, inadequate access to health care, individual and behavioral factors and educational inequalities (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention., 2020, November 24).
We can help reduce health disparities and unbalanced health care by addressing social determinants of health, social determinants are conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play that affect a wide range of health and quality of life-risks and outcomes (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention., 2020, November 24).
Hope everyone has a great week,
Discussion #4Within the State of South Dakota, the Department of Health and the US Department of Human Services is very diligent about investigating health diseases within a community and they continue to identify the diseases and the outcomes. According to the Department of Health in South Dakota, it was discovered within the last 10 years that individuals were not following up on appointments as they should and they were non-compliant after leaving the hospital. In 2019 the State started offering grants to communities that would take the program on and they were pilot programs that would track the individual’s health and also the physicians would track the compliance of their patients and also their follow appointment attendance. The Department of Health with the disease process within the state has numerous committees and departments that track all of this and they also have community members who go out within the communities to see what the community members see as barriers to health care.
https://doh.sd.gov/diseases/chronic/heartdisease/chw.aspx
Discussion #5
The Federal Government utilizes various ways to pinpoint underserved populations and locate areas and their geographical locations that do not have access to quality healthcare. One of those assets that are used is a census but because it requires input from the end user, in this case, an underserved population the results are not always very accurate. In addition, they have employed various tools to help identify locations where population groups, or facilities
that undersupply adequate health personnel and identify them as Health Manpower Shortage Areas (HMSA). (Health Resources & Services Administration, 2022)
According to the Health Resources & Services Administration, “The shortage designations are used to improve access to primary care, dental, and mental health providers.” (Health Resources & Services Administration, 2022)
The main goal of these programs is to help and lower the health disparities by providing access to periodic visits to
doctors and preventative care. (Health Resources & Services Administration, 2022)
In my opinion, a more frequent population census or some way of tracking the population growth of certain affected members of the community may help to find efficient ways to place services or health centers in order to make it easier to obtain quality healthcare to the most fragile community groups affected by disparities.
Resources:
U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration. (2022, July 5). HRSA Strategic Plan FY 2022. Retrieved August 8, 2022, from https://www.hrsa.gov/about/strategic-plan/index.html
Discussion #6
Great post Martin I find it very important that the Federal Government continues its investigation into disease and unserved areas. WIthout our governmental agencies, I do not believe we would be able to identify the problems that we do have. Solving the problems I believe is what we struggle with but I believe that as a governmental agency they need to come up with funded programs to solve these problems. Making mandates that are unfunded like EMTALA there are only making it harder for Health Care Facilities to operate. These Health Care Facilities are being forced to see patients that do not medically need an ER is only placing the strain on the providers, but with the program, you are seeing these underserved populations when needed. So there are good and bad to all programs but funding is what is something that needs to be evaluated always.
