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Healthcare Issues Affecting My Local Community Issue 1: Health and Healthcare Disparities. Health disparities refer to the difference in health among groups that arise from social inequalities. CDC (2023) defines it as preventable differences in disease, injury, violence, burden, and opportunity to achieve optimal healthcare faced by disadvantaged populations. CDC asserts that health disparities are caused by poverty, individual and behavioral factors, educational inequalities, and environmental threats. Some of the most glaring health disparities in my community include the higher prevalence of obesity and chronic stress among low-income earners. Obesity is particularly prevalent among African-American women. Low-income earners also tend to have difficulty accessing healthcare insurance.
How to Alleviate Health and Healthcare Disparities. Culturally Competent care: Healthcare providers need to understand and respect the needs of patients from diverse backgrounds. A culturally competent healthcare workforce can be achieved by promoting the recruitment of healthcare workers from diverse backgrounds and offering cultural competency training to healthcare workers. Promoting access to insurance: Enabling socially disadvantaged community members to access health insurance is one of the most effective ways to alleviate health and healthcare disparities (Artiga et al., 2020). The objective can be achieved by lowering requirements for eligibility to programs like Medicaid.
