Thursday, February 3, 2011

Before this reading this article, I had kind of unconsciously attributed health disparities between races to the socioeconomic statuses associated with those races. However, after looking at the data in this article, I realized that SES is only one of the many social factors associated with race. It really surprised me that even when comparing poor white women with poor black women in their rates of hypertension and obesity, there were such great differences. Another really interesting table was the one comparing personal and household incomes of black, white and hispanic women. Black and hispanic women with less education had higher earnings than white women but white women with more education had higher earnings. Additionally, the household incomes of white women were much greater than their personal incomes, indicating that there might be correlations with the dynamics of marriages and the health of their family lives.

Week 5 Reading

I found this reading especially interesting because I always think that socioeconomic status plays a very important role in the disparity in women health. Especially, as the writer says, almost half of all minority children are growing in poverty. This results in the inevitable disparity in these next generations. The socioeconomic status is really a broad idea and this is always a problem because it requires many elements to be considered in the same if the government want to solve it. These elements include historical, social, economic, political, and cultural element. The hardest part I believe is probably the cultural part. I mean, sometimes even the government provides free services to these groups, if this service is contradicting to their religious belief, those people will definitely reject. I remembered one of the readings i did during the summer. It is story about a hmong girl. In this story, there is a wall between hmong's traditional understanding of medicine and treatment and western countries' advanced technology. This barrier somewhat caused the death of that girl. As a result, it is clear to see how important to deal with cultural and religious belief.
The reading really interested me because it relates quite closely to a topic we've been discussing in my social and cultural Anthro class, which is Biological Determinism in the study of race. The article states: "Early research on racial differences in health in the United States viewed racial categories as capturing biological homogeneity and racial disparities in health as genetically determined." It goes on to say how race should not be viewed in this way and I thought I should add what I have learned thus far from our discussions in Anthro. The main problem with classifying race in terms of "biological differences" is that it distorts people's views of health disparities as well as their views of people of other races, suggesting that race indicates a critical difference in human analysis, which is false. Although the article does show several differences in the trends of how health disparities have affected different racial groups I think it's an important point to stress that this data does not indicate that race can be determined by a biological category difference between people.

SES, Race, and Poor Health Effects

Reading “Racial/Ethnic Variations in Women’s Health: The Social Embeddedness of Health” really reiterated how much socioeconomic status catalyzed unequal responses to healthcare among women of color. This stands in stark contrast to early responses to disparities in health (early research in the United States viewed racial differences in health outcomes as genetically determined). I also thought it was interesting how the author made sure to make clear the fact that health disparities and differences between whites and people of color must be examined while still accounting for culture and attitudes. Take the high prevalence of obesity in the Black community. As the author posits, “some evidence suggests that Blacks have more tolerant attitudes toward obesity.” However, these same attitudes may end up being correlated to negative health effects like diabetes and high blood pressure. So then question, then, becomes, how to make sure that people from across racial and cultural backgrounds receive the same treatment and are able to maintain and value a healthy lifestyle when certain cultures might no altogether believe that the factors correlating poor health (ie. a more curvy, full figure) are not negative and might be highly valued?

I was also shocked by much of the information the authors brought up with regards to education. According to reports, “Infants born to Black women in the lowest education category are 1.7 times as likely to die before their first birthday as are infants born to similarly educated White females.” I considered this fact to be the most arresting of the reading and one which indicates the fact that poor health within communities of color are more than just caused or correlated by income and poverty level. Racism and prejudice also stands in the way of minorities and people historically discriminated as a result of their racial, cultural, or ethnic background, and often leaves them with adverse health effects that continue replicating in latter generations.

SES and Health

This article (the new one) made me think about the introsem I am in about Children's Health Disparities. We studied the differences in infant mortality and birth weight based on the mother's health and demographics. Because of that, I wasn't too surprised about this article, but it reinforced some of the ideas we learned.

It is shocking how little is done to close health disparities between races, education levels, and socio-economic status. Even more than simply having basic health, the fact that there are inequalities makes it even worse because we know that we can do better and just aren't. Using the highest health categories should give us guidelines about how to shape policies to close the health disparities.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Week 5 Readings

I found some of the article’s claims to be very interesting, in particular the statistics about gender differences and race differences in health. The article throws out many different statistics, in particular, the one about how white women have a life expectancy at birth that is 5.2 years greater than that of their black peers. However, this statistic doesn’t take into account the socioeconomic differences and other factors that affect this statistic.

Additionally, the fact that the mortality ratio of minority to white for men is similar to the ratio for women suggests a bigger factor explaining the health disparities is race (which also has many factors that may suggest why, for instance socioeconomic status, etc.).

Overall, I thought the article did a good job talking about all the factors associated with the health disparities among different races, but could have been clearer with explaining the reasoning behind some of the statistics.

This reading also reminded me of the health factors presented in class from last week, reinforcing what we learned with statistics that broke down the demographics of the women assessed. Though none of the numbers was particularly surprising, the data really showed that it was a combination of factors that resulted in higher risks for particular groups. Older age, minority status, and a lack of coverage (that was associated with lower SES and income) all had converging effects, indicating the importance of making sure that the health provisions have to be comprehensive enough to cover all the women who may be at risk.

New Week 5 Reading

The fact that women of different ethnicities are predisposed to acquire certain diseases, or are at higher risk of getting them is not very surprising. What is very concerning, however, is the fact that in the US, if you are a woman of color who is has a lower socioeconomic status, you are more likely to acquire diseases and to be unhealthier than people of higher income levels and white people. This is very telling of our health system and the efforts that need to be made to treat the poor and minorities. I really enjoyed reading this article, looking forward to class!

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Week 5

This article really assaults the audience with numbers and percentages, which is a little difficult to sift through. I didn't realize how many factors contribute to quality of health,including race and income. Although I realize that correlation does not equal causation, it is still disappointing to see so many "Women of Color" with low percentages of screening. However, it was interesting to note that among all of the key issues, 90% of women had received a Pap test screening, compared with 79% who received a mammogram. It is relieving to know that cancer is still getting women's attention, although maybe we need to shift focus to the more hidden killers, like high blood pressure and diabetes.
Although the reading was brief it brought forth several important points about the health of young women in America. It's important to notice how current this summary is and to see how women are affected by health disparities today. A lot of the points reminded me of our discussion and presentation last time. Especially the topic of diabetes, obesity, and smoking. The ethnic breakdown is something we haven't spent as much time discussing and is essential to explore, however, as we've seen already women have been underrepresented in studies so it may be a little too much to ask for even more specific research at this point. Also I would be interested in learning more about how socio economic status relates to these prevalent health disparities especially as we will be working in Sacramento and San Francisco, two places which present us with women of all different walks of life and backgrounds.

Honestly, it was a bit difficult to read this article, because it listed off so many statistics. However, I found it very informative on this topic. I found the statistics comparing insured women and uninsured women very interesting. I think it’s very sad that lack of health insurance bars so many women from preventative tests like mammographies and pap smears, and I’d be interested to learn about the health policies to increase women’s access to such preventative care. One of the things I wish this article did was to include some statistics about nonelderly men, so that we could draw comparisons.

Reading for Week 5

I found this article very disturbing. The fact that non-elderly women are prone to so many health problems due to the fact that they are women and additionally because of the environments in which they live is very problematic. Non elderly women are child-bearers, workers, caretakers and homemakers. Society is very dependent upon non-elderly women, and if they are at high risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and other diseases, it is scary to think what state these non-elderly women will be when they are elderly. What will the state of their children be? Poverty, lack of education, and environment cause many of these risk factors, but the way that race plays a role is also very interesting. It would be very curious to see the correlation between the high risk of non-elderly women based on their race versus their socio-economic status.

Interesting Article About Women and Heart Health

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/heart/articles/2011/02/01/new-campaign-urges-women-to-know-signs-of-heart-attack

I came across this article about women and heart health, which was really interesting to read after last week's presentation about women and heart disease by Dr. Tremmel.

The article says:

"According to the American Heart Association, only 53 percent said they would call 911 even if they thought they were having a heart attack, which is why the federal government is starting a new campaign called Make the Call, Don't Miss A Beat."

It's pretty scary thought that someone may think that they are having a heart attack, but still not call for help. Hopefully this campaign will be successful!
I agree with Kayo in the sense that I wonder what exactly the health care reform bill will do. Yes the fact-sheet said that the recent health care bill will help with the disparities, but on what grounds do they make that assertion? I'm not against the health care bill and I realize that it isn't in the scope of the fact-sheet to discuss specifics, I was just wondering.

Sometimes I found the percentages to be a little confusing and maybe a little misrepresented, for example when the obesity rate for women ages 18-29 was lower than for women ages 30-64, the comparison is between an 11 year gap and 34 year gap and that leads me to doubt the importance of that particular statistic, it would have been more convincing if they had broken up the 30-64 age group and had stats for that. But overall I found it interesting that ethnicity revealed so many disparities and I wonder how much of that can be attributed to socioeconomic status or genetic-predispositions.

Anyways, by the end of it, it's clear to me that non-elderly women represent a gap in our healthcare system and that something should be done about it (both from an economic/burden viewpoint and for quality of life).

Monday, January 31, 2011

In the article, I was surprised at the great proportion of non-elderly women who were living on low income and how many of them had so many health related issues. Coming from a family who has a grandmother that still goes around on her bicycle playing ground golf and the likes, these facts really came as something more like a culture shock. That said, I think it is a really good thing that there are going to be more health reforms where health care would become more accessible. I was curious as to what prompted people to look into non-elderly women, since I get the vague impression that elderly people are usually the focus. I suppose it's nice, however, since taking good care of health from a younger age might lead to a generally better health situation in the older age.

Also, I found it interesting how different races seemed to have different issues in health, with some more than others. This could also be an interesting point to look further into?

That said, on an even more irrelevant note, I was also curious as to how these policies are going to be funded?