African Americans’ Health Status

Health Promotion in Minority Populations
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Health Promotion in Minority Populations
The United States has multiple ethnic minority groups, including American Indians/Alaskan Natives, Asian Americans, Black/African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. According to Hostetter and Klein (2018), ethnic and racial minority groups experience healthcare racial disparities, including disregard for exposure to preventive health services. Unlike the dominant white race, they endure low-quality care, poor healthcare access, and affordability, among other factors (Mahajan et al., 2021). The focus is on African Americans’ health status as depicted by reputable organizations such as WHO, CDC, and Healthy People.
African Americans experience healthcare disparities that are attributed to increased death rates or lower life expectancy when compared to the average white person. According to Radley et al. (2021), blacks were more likely to succumb to manageable health conditions, citing the poor healthcare access, unaffordability, and low-quality care they were often exposed to. Social determinants of health, including poverty, food insecurity, wealth and income inequality, and inadequate access to safe and affordable care, among other factors, exuberated the health inequality between the African American population and the dominant white race. The population is one of the adversely disadvantaged groups economically, which implies that key health factors, including health insurance coverage, are challenging. Health People 2030 adds that low-income populations, in this case, African Americans, barely have access to healthy foods, which increases the risk of respiratory and cardiovascular infections, including heart disease, which ultimately invites lower life expectancy (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2023). In other words, the current health status of this group is relatively poor compared to the dominant white race.
Despite the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, black Americans still constitute a significant population of uninsured Americans. This is worsened by the fact that most of the coverage alternatives can be unaffordable to the population, owing to their economic disadvantage and subsequent prevalence in low-income neighborhoods. Even though ACA and subsequent policies, including the American Rescue Plan, increased the percentage of insured African Americans, the group still has a relatively higher uninsured population, which limits access to care (ASPE, 2022). The CDC (2021) ties the health disparities/inequalities to racism, including structural and interpersonal, which can impede the physical and psychological health and well-being of the population. As a country with a history of racism, communities of color have been adversely affected, and the impacts worsen because of the social and economic disparities since, unlike whites, for example, African Americans register relatively low wealth, income, employment opportunities, and are prone to poor housing neighborhoods and the built environment.
The above social and economic factors increase exposure to mental illness, chronic conditions, and...