Health Promotion in Minority Populations Analysis

Health Promotion in the minority Population (African American Population)
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Health Promotion in the minority Population (African American Population)
Healthcare is increasingly faced with widening health disparities amongst various groups and cultures across the globe. The imbalances in healthcare are linked to the difference in socioeconomic, cultural, and historical backgrounds. Due to racial and socio-cultural heterogeneity in the US, health disparities amongst the population are prevalent. Healthcare disparities are manifestations of variations that may determine the health status of a given population. Such variations are often defined as social determinants of health and may include differences in race, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, sexual identity, disability status, education level, and sex. According to Healthy People 2020, all of these variables shape person's ability to achieve optimal health. It must be noted that significant evidence shows that health disparities do unravel differential health outcomes across different groups. Such differences are traceable to health inequities emanating from systematic variations and occupation of unequal positions in society that are avoidable and unjust. Many US communities experience health disparities variably. This paper will focus on African Americans as one of the US population groups experiencing a significant level of health iniquities. When compared to national averages in many aspects of health, African Americans manifest spectra of health disparities.
Description of African American Minority group and Health Status Comparison to National Averages.
The US depicts persistent racial disparities in health coverage, chronic health illnesses, mental and psychological health, morbidities, and mortalities. These disparities are not products of a person's or group's behavior but, instead, they result from decades of systematic inequality in the US economic, housing, and health care systems. When compared to national health outcomes, African Americans experience poorer health outcomes. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC), African Americans live longer, where their current death rate for African Americans has declined about 25% over 17 years, primarily for people aged 65 years and above. Still, even with such improvements, new evidence shows that younger African Americans live with or die of many illnesses typically found in white Americans at older ages. The differences may explain early mortalities and morbidities amongst African Americans in their 20s, 30s, and 40s for diseases and causes of death, which are not relatively common in the white population within similar age limits and national averages of disease prevalence. Early exposure to diseases is a worrying concern because it can contribute to early deaths.
A snapshot into US health disparity data paints the extent of the disproportionate status of health amongst black Americans in terms of health coverage, chronic health conditions, mental health, and leading causes of death. For example, 10.6 percent of African Americans (AAs) were uninsured compared with 5.9 percent of non-Hispanic whites,89.4 percent of AAs had he...