Title : Minority community health initiative- A health disparities call to action
Abstract:
Health disparities in rural and underserved communities often go unchecked leaving individuals to fend for themselves in terms of undiagnosed medical conditions, misunderstanding of diagnoses, and ongoing mistrust of healthcare systems. Community mistrust of healthcare systems and the lack of necessary services perpetuate uncontrolled chronic conditions, the spread misinformation, and negatively impacts individuals, families, and generations throughout communities.
The engagement of trusted members of minority communities, together with healthcare provider guidance can help to alleviate communication barriers which are often present with patient-provider interactions. The lack of urgency and awareness around such a myriad of disparate and often preventable diagnoses calls attention to the need for an increase in minority community health initiatives. Understanding the needs of minority communities, and the importance of healthcare provider representation, reflective of the residents within respective communities, too often falls short. To this point, strategies around recruitment of minorities into healthcare fields of study is much needed within minority community school systems, public and private college systems, public libraries, and communities of worship.
The author will examine the above barriers to care for minority communities as well as delve into a barrier often overlooked in healthcare as it relates to linguistic discrimination. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to shine the light on barriers to care for minority communities which have always existed, but still have yet to be addressed. The author was asked by a local community Health Officer to develop a Minority Community Health Initiative plan, due to such a wide gap in health disparities which exist with minority and underserved populations of the community. The author concludes by discussing a call to action framework which can be adopted and utilized as a tool to begin addressing barriers to care in underserved communities.
Audience Take Away:
- Practical tools to begin addressing barriers to care which continue to exist in minority and underserved communities.
- Methods of engaging trusted members of minority and underserved communities to lead healthcare initiatives.
- Increasing representation of minorities in healthcare, and strategies for doing the work around recruitment into the healthcare field.
- Techniques to address covert and overt linguistic discrimination in healthcare systems and impacts to care of underserved communities.
