The widespread health disparities between quality and cost are mainly used to determine existing inequalities within healthcare services. In 2016, studies examined healthcare’s relationship with quality and cost relating to lifespan (Chetty et al., 2016). These disparities in healthcare are chiefly attributed to social class and financial value in communities. Those in poorer communities must deal with public healthcare facilities that mean longer wait times, impersonal interactions with healthcare professionals that do not understand them (language or cultural), and potentially poor treatment regarding medical diagnosis (Barr, 2014). Those in wealthier communities can afford private care and therefore faster wait times, better doctors, more accurate diagnoses. With such disparities present in American healthcare, studies aim to understand the rationale behind such occurrences and determine how to improve patient outcomes for working-class communities.
While social class plays a role in healthcare disparities, so does race and ethnicity. “…blacks and other minorities continue to have worse health status than whites for a broad range of conditions…the difference to the neighborhood effects of decreased social capital that accompany continued residential racial segregation across a range of SES” (Barr, 2014, p. 171). Social class and race/ethnicity are tied together regarding healthcare disparities. To improve these disparities, the potential solution lies in...
“framework of cultural competence interventions— including minority recruitment into the health professions, development of interpreter services and language-appropriate health educational materials, and provider education on cross-cultural issues—emerged to categorize strategies to address racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care” (Betancourt, 2013, p. 293).
One example of this is the private agency, Minority Healthcare Communications Inc. It is a non-profit health education organization aimed at the promotion and creation of specialized healthcare seminars, workshops, and education conferences in the Latino and African-American Communities (Minority Healthcare Communications, 2010). The conferences, enable healthcare professionals to come together and work towards improving healthcare disparities in poorer, non-white neighborhoods. Such collaborative efforts enable the practice of minority hires that is a potential solution towards closing the gap of healthcare disparities. The same can be said of The Florida Department of Health in their attempt at promoting health equity and minority health.
The department established in 2004, the Office of Minority Health to help combat the higher rates of death and illness among minorities (Florida…
