Health Promotion in Minority Populations
Select an ethnic minority group that is represented in the United States (American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian American, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander). Using health information available from Healthy People, the CDC, and other relevant government websites, analyze the health status for this group.
In a paper of 1,000-1,250 words, compare and contrast the health status of your selected minority group to the national average. Include the following:
Describe the ethnic minority group selected. Describe the current health status of this group. How do race and ethnicity influence health for this group?
What are the health disparities that exist for this group? What are the nutritional challenges for this group?
Discuss the barriers to health for this group resulting from culture, socioeconomics, education, and sociopolitical factors.
What health promotion activities are often practiced by this group?
Describe at least one approach using the three levels of health promotion prevention (primary, secondary, and tertiary) that is likely to be the most effective in a care plan given the unique needs of the minority group you have selected. Provide an explanation of why it might be the most effective choice.
What cultural beliefs or practices must be considered when creating a care plan? What cultural theory or model would be best to support culturally competent health promotion for this population? Why?
Cite at least three peer-reviewed or scholarly sources to complete this assignment. Sources should be published within the last 5 years and appropriate for the assignment criteria and public health content.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
Sample Paper
Health Promotion in Minority Populations
There are numerous ethnic groups in the United States. White Americans are the racial and ethnic majority, representing 57.8% of the population. Latin and Hispanics are the most significant ethnic minority, encompassing 18.7% of the population, whereas Black or African Americans are the largest racial minority group, representing 12.1 % (Laditka & Laditka 2018). All these individuals from diverse backgrounds and ethnicity are entitled to a quality and equity life. There’s a need to consider several health disparities and impacts towards healthcare to increase access to quality-based services and health.
Ethnic Minority Group Selected
Despite significant advances in healthcare, it is a fact that racial and ethnic minorities tend to receive a low quality of care than the patients and non-minorities from ethnic minority groups. These groups experience more significant mortality and morbidity from numerous chronic illnesses than non-minorities. Ethnicity is where a group of individuals hail from a given area and share the same culture, religion, language and other main characteristics that often are handed from one generation to another. The Black/African Americans group represented in the U.S is one of the largest minority ethnic groups and is mostly of African ancestry, but several of individuals have non-Black ancestors. This group experience a lot in sustaining their quality life. It is faced with problem of poverty, availability and affordability of healthcare. They are deprived of following poor living conditions and low quality of life since they cannot earn a living. Most of the populations in this group are food insecure thus doesn’t have a well-balanced diet to sustain a quality life. Also, they are bound with numerous cultural practices that believe more in traditional herbal treatment methods than the modern system of looking for medical attention, thus affecting their health status.
Health Disparities Existing for This Group and Nutritional Challenges
Health disparities are avoidable differences in burden of injury, disease, violence or chances to attain optimal health experienced by the socially disadvantaged populations (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2020). These disparities are unequal and are directly correlated to historical and present unequal delivery of environmental, political, social, economic resources. African American populations face health disparities following social, physical, economic and even political factors. Numerous health disparities exist in this particular group, with availability and affordability of healthcare services as the key factor. The group has been deprived of low social class and poverty where they cannot afford expensive healthcare-based services, leading to the healthcare disparity. Also, individuals from this group are exposed to the low status of education following lack of adequate education-based centres leading to a low level of literacy; hence cannot exercise positive healthcare practices and health promotion to prevent disease and attain wellness. Besides, they face nutritional challenges where they can’t sustain a balanced diet since they can’t afford these diets following money issues. This has led to low immunity, increasing malnourished conditions and even death following various nutritious based conditions.
Barriers To Health for The Group Resulting from Culture, Socioeconomics, Education and Sociopolitical Factors
Black Americans face numerous challenges towards accessing quality healthcare (Lewis & Van Dyke 2018). Culture as a key route of life has many effects on accessing quality healthcare. Several individuals from this group aren’t learned and can speak one language, making it hard to access quality healthcare services. It is thus hard to provide care to this group due to poor communication leading to poor adherence and understanding of healthcare services. Additionally, cultural practices like the type of food the group access, herbal medicine and beliefs don’t help access enhanced healthcare services. Socioeconomic status like improved poverty level has denied access to health services because most individuals cannot afford and access available health services. Individuals from the group have a low literacy level and thus cannot complete health practices and promotion towards refining health. As they have poor health literacy, they cannot adapt and accept health practices concerned with refining health status because of the low admission of students to the learning institutions. Besides, Black Americans have no government representatives that can manage the resources and form opportunities to improve their healthcare services, thus preventing good access to health.
Health Promotion Activities Often Practiced by This Group
Health promotions are the programs meant to engage and empower communities and individuals to choose healthy behaviours making changes that cut the danger of illnesses and morbidities. Health promotion activities practised by Black Americans include campaigns towards increasing access to lifestyle and resources support (Leitch et al., 2021). They would encompass in seeking the donor support and well-wishers to increase the access towards healthcare. The other health promotion activities encompass refining the level of health literacy via health education to have essential information making positive health changes towards refining health and attaining wellness. This empowers individuals to fight for their rights seeking significant resources towards refining health and wellness.
Approach Using Three Levels of Health Promotion Prevention
Primary health promotion may be the best alternative because it aims at preventing illness before it happens. It includes prevention of the contact, unsafe behaviours that may lead to disease or injury, increasing resistance to the injury or illness. This would involve allowing the community on health promotion and prevention to have essential information to refine health status. Primary health promotion prevention actions include appropriate hygiene measures, in quest of a well-balanced diet, and getting involved in physical activity to endorse health preventing illnesses. This will be the best technique as most of the population have poor health literacy, therefore, cannot complete health preventive actions. Additionally, this can be the best choice as it’s less expensive and is related to minimized sorrow and illness.
Cultural Beliefs or Practices That Should Be Considered When Creating Care Plan and
Cultural Model Best to Support the Culturally Competent Health
Promotion
Cultural practices like language and communication should be well-thought-out whenever creating a healthcare plan. As most individuals in this group have a low level of literacy, they’re not able to comprehend other common languages; therefore, translation or an alternate communication means require to be taken into consideration to enhance understanding and implementation of the health preventive actions via health promotion. The cultural competency model may be the best model to support culturally skilled health promotion because it guarantees expansion and delivery of appropriate healthcare and population-based health services for growing different population that involves the current medically underserved (Brottman et al.,2020). It’s the most ideal because it uses evidence-based practices for health promotion. It provides quality resolutions that are culturally diverse, complex and skilled, restoring human self-esteem and honesty as they don’t go against cultural practices and beliefs.
References
Brottman, M. R., Char, D. M., Hattori, R. A., Heeb, R., & Taff, S. D. (2020). Toward cultural competency in health care: a scoping review of the diversity and inclusion education literature. Academic Medicine, 95(5), 803-813. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000002995
Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, November 24). Health disparities among youth. https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/disparities/index.htm#
Laditka, J. N., & Laditka, S. B. (2018). Work disability in the United States, 1968–2015: Prevalence, duration, recovery, and trends. SSM-population health, 4, 126-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2017.12.006
Leitch, S., Corbin, J. H., Boston-Fisher, N., Ayele, C., Delobelle, P., Gwanzura Ottemöller, F., … & Wicker, J. (2021). Black lives matter in health promotion: moving from unspoken to outspoken. Health Promotion International, 36(4), 1160-1169. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daaa121
Lewis, T. T., & Van Dyke, M. E. (2018). Discrimination and the health of African Americans: The potential importance of intersectionalities. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(3), 176-182. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721418770442
