Verified Document

Healthcare Disparities Essay

When speaking of healthcare disparities, it is normal to speak of commonly impacted groups such as women or African-Americans. The diseases or disorders that are commonly the focus of such policy and strategy are things like diabetes, heart disease and so forth. However, this brief report shall represent a change of pace in that something else has reared its head this year. That something has been much more virulent and nasty than is normally seen. That, of course, would be the flu. Flu season this year has been especially nasty and the same factors that commonly cause vulnerable classes to suffer more from diabetes and heart disease, just to name two, also impact them when it comes to the flu. While some may think that getting flu shots is a waste of time, the number of dead and severely debilitated just this year proves otherwise. Analysis

The healthcare policy change that should happen when it comes to the flu is two-pronged in nature. First, the affected classes and people that are not getting the flu vaccine should be pressed to get one. Whatever the limiting factors happen to be should be removed from being barriers. Depending on the situation, it might be general access to care, transportation, cost or other things. However, the flu vaccines are readily available and cost is not nearly the issue that it could be with other things. The other prong would be improving the vaccine so that “missing” the strain that is prevalent in a given year does not have the rather negative outcomes that it had this year or any similar year....

In short, there must be a push to help the general performance of the vaccine in addition to getting the proper penetration into the patient pool, inclusive of the vulnerable groups that are less likely to get the vaccine in the first place. This is very much an initiative that is centered on public and community health. The implicaitons are public-wide but the manner in which these gaps are resolved will need to be on the community level in many instances. The CDC and other groups can trumpet the importance of getting the vaccine all day. However, community-level interventions will be necessary to truly make progress. There is not currently a prevalent “bill” or piece of legislation to change the flu shot process. However, there certainly needs to be one. Whatever needs to be done to increase work on a more effective flu shot must be completed. This includes dedicating the proper people, money, time and other resources. If this needs to be an explicit part of law so that nobody has the ability or option to divert resources elsewhere, then that is what needs to happen. No administrator or legislator in a proverbial ivory tower should have the ability to divert away from this priority (Woods, 2018).
The federal “champion” behind this effort needs to be no less than the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The President needs to dedicate direct attention to this just like what is already happening with the opioid crisis. The health department and health public policy leaders in the respective states should follow…

Sources used in this document:

References

Allday, E. (2018). Flu deaths up in California amid concern over vaccine. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 27 February 2018, from https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/ Flu-deaths-up-in-California-amid-concern-over-12460570.php

McKenna, M. (2018). Big Pharma Has the Flu. WIRED. Retrieved 27 February 2018, from https://www.wired.com/story/flu-vaccine-big-pharma/

Woods, B. (2018). Flu deaths up in California amid concern over vaccine. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 27 February 2018, from https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/Flu-deaths-up-in-California-amid-concern-over-12460570.php


Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Healthcare Disparities Race Related
Words: 6959 Length: 23 Document Type: Research Paper

Health Care Disparities Race Related Healthcare disparities Serial number Socioeconomic status and health Correlation between socioeconomic status and race Health insurance and health Who are the uninsured people? Causes of health care disparities Suggestions for better health care system The latest studies have shown that in spite of the steady developments in the overall health of the United States, racial and ethnic minorities still experience an inferior quality of health services and are less likely to receive routine medical

Healthcare Disparities in the U.S.:
Words: 2117 Length: 8 Document Type: Term Paper

S. healthcare structure do not include the unobserved disparities. This may sound very rudimentary, even silly to point out, but in by understanding that the numbers are actually worse than they appear, and that the rising costs of healthcare services re associated with both what we see and can't see, it is easier to understand how costs rise so quickly. It is also a sobering fact that what we cannot observe

Health Care Disparity in Maryland
Words: 18449 Length: 67 Document Type: Dissertation

Figure 1 portrays the state of Maryland, the location for the focus of this DRP. Figure 1: Map of Maryland, the State (Google Maps, 2009) 1.3 Study Structure Organization of the Study The following five chapters constitute the body of Chapter I: Introduction Chapter II: Review of the Literature Chapter III: Methods and Results Chapter IV: Chapter V: Conclusions, Recommendations, and Implications Chapter I: Introduction During Chapter I, the researcher presents this study's focus, as it relates to the

Healthcare Disparity in Georgia
Words: 1488 Length: 4 Document Type: Research Paper

Healthcare Disparity in Georgia HIV infection continues to be a substantial trouble in Bibb County, Georgia. This illness substantially impacts lots of areas and Bibb County shares among the greatest HIV rates in America. One reason Bibb County deals with greater rates of infection is due to the high minority populace. Likewise, high levels of poverty and joblessness can make it tough for an individual to keep his/her health plan and

Healthcare Disparities
Words: 1425 Length: 5 Document Type: Research Paper

Healthcare Disparities: Minority Populations Introduction The United States is a major world power and a major industrialized nation. Despite this fact, its healthcare system does not provide universal access to care, in stark contrast to most other affluent world powers. Some citizens have access to highly comprehensive insurance through their employers while others do not. Certain low-income individuals qualify for either subsidized insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or for Medicaid,

Healthcare Disparities and Barriers to Health
Words: 1134 Length: 4 Document Type: Research Paper

African Americans: State of Health Compared with National AverageAfrican Americans suffer significant health disparities when compared with their non-Black counterparts. According to Chinn, Martin & Redmond (2021), health equity among African Americas has suffered because of institutional and individual racism and discrimination, both in terms of socioeconomic discrimination in employment and education, and also because of healthcare provider discrimination, as providers may give insufficient weight to higher risk factors for

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now