Health Promotion for Minorities

Healthcare Promotion for Minorities
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Healthcare Promotion for Minorities
African Americans make up one of the largest ethnic minority groups in the country. The majority of them are individuals of African ancestry; however, they have non-Black ancestors as well. African Americans are mainly descendants of slaves bought from African countries and forced to work in American fields. Consequently, their rights were limited, and for an extended period, they were denied opportunities for any economic, social, and political progress. Nevertheless, African Americans have found ways to make long-lasting contributions to the overall American history and culture.
Currently, the health status of African Americans has improved. They live longer, with the death rate decreasing by about 25% over 17 years, especially for persons aged 65 years and above. However, this is just an improvement as a recent analysis shows that young African Americans live or die with conditions typically affecting older White Americans. For instance, African Americans aged 18-49 years are twice likely to die from heart complications than whites of the same age. African Americans aged 35-64 years have a 50% chance of having high blood pressure than their White agemates.
Despite significant improvements in healthcare, there is evidence that minorities tend to receive a lower healthcare quality. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on unequal treatment associates the existence of "racial and ethnic disparities with worse outcomes for minorities in many cases. The information renewed the interest in understanding the sources of the discrepancies, contributing factors, and possible interventions to eliminate them. Estimations by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that 29.1 million, or 9.3% of the American population, live with diabetes CITATION Wal16 \l 1033 (Walker, Williams, & Egede, 2016). The disease is the leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, and lower limb amputation for adults. Minority populations in the United States suffer this burden the greatest with weaker self-management abilities, worse diabetes-related complications resulting in higher mortality rates.
African Americans make up 13.4% of the US population. Despite massive gains over the years, they still experience extremely high illness and infirmity rates and a low life expectancy. They are also having the highest rates of economic disadvantages of any demographic in the country. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) managed to insure 20 million Americans, 2.8 million being African American. Despite this improvement, data shows that this number is significantly lower compared to the White population. As of 2018, the rates stood at 9.7% for African Americans and 5.4% among whites. Another difference is that African Americans are more likely to be covered under employer-sponsored or private health insurance. 55% of the whites have private health insurance while 41.2% relied on Medicaid and other public insurance.
Social, cultural, environmental, economic, and behavioral aspects contribute to diet-related disparities. In the past three decades, overweight and obesity are prevalent issues affecting children and adolescents ...