Synergy in Multicultural Healthcare

Now that the race has narrowed down to two, we can finally anticipate some useful debate on the issue of healthcare policy, which continues to score among top three in issues chart across the nation. Even the town hall type debates, as being planned, could be useful. After all, just like politics, healthcare is local. Not just in terms of which HMO is underwriting or what hospitals are in the neighborhood; but because healthcare access, quality and outcomes have shown relationship to factors like poverty, race, gender, what state one lives in, and the geography within the state. Also, these factors could have synergistic effects. For instance, a poor African American woman could face two entirely different lifestyles living in Colorado as opposed to Massachusetts. If one’s abode can have such an effect on health outcomes perhaps all underdogs need to move to more favorable states.

A study from Darthmouth, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, revisited these disparities. Between the states, there were wide racial and gender differences in terms of complications from chronic diseases. This could be a proxy of lack of access, affordability, lack of preventive care strategies, or perhaps all of the above. But the end result is the same: poor, nonwhite women who lack higher education are getting the short end of the stick. When we talk about universal access, is that the answer of all these? Probably not. But equal access at least provides us with an even playing field, after which the rest of the factors will need more focused, dedicated and long term patient education. Let us try to fix what is relatively easier to fix, and then teach the population in general.

Let there be no mistake with higher prevalence and incidence of some chronic diseases in certain races and genders. To list an example of what is at stake here, is a higher rate of amputation in black diabetic women. This is bothersome, and reflects on access, affordability, and preventive care. It serves as a proxy for the issues prevalent in our present healthcare system, what we have talked about in previous blogs and what we are hoping will improve with the wave of change being promised this time around.