Suggestions to Reduce Health Disparities and Improve Social Justice

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Suggestions to Reduce Health Disparities and Improve Social Justice

The most recent global world crisis is the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. The first case of the novel COVID-19 was reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019 (Cao et al., 2021). The disease later spread very fast infecting millions of people and bringing economic activities to almost a standstill as nations imposed strict movement measures to curb the spread of the disease. The coronavirus pandemic was also associated with severe healthcare and social effects. Today, nations are striving to revive from the adverse effects of COVID-19 crisis, which has led to a paradigm shift for health disparities and social justice. Health disparities refer to avoidable differences in the load of violence, injury, disease, or chances to achieve optimum health encountered by socially disadvantaged people (Louis et al., 2015). Usually, health disparities are a specific subgroup of health differences that significantly impact social justice since they are likely to rise from unintentional or intentional marginalization or discrimination and perpetuate vulnerability and social disadvantage. This paper discusses suggestions for positive change in healthcare disparities and social justice.

Eliminating health disparities should be our primary goal. We should be focused on changing the paradigm shift from centering on inequalities to targeting at sustainable health equity. One of the ways that can lead to a positive change in healthcare disparities and social justice is ensuring that health equity is achieved by ensuring the distribution of resources within the equity zone (Garay etal., 2017). An equity zone is a zone well-suited for the universal right to health. Setting limits within which the scale of inequalities is regarded as ethical is necessary for any attempt to estimate the degree of equitable distribution of market-generated disparities. Therefore, to ensure positive change in health disparities and social justice, such limits should be established following the need for human dignity and the limitations of excessive wealth.

Increasing public and provider awareness is another suggestion that may be used to help bring about positive change concerning health disparities and social justice (Bediako etal., 2020). When health care practitioners or the general public are uninformed of an issue with health disparities or do not comprehend the nature of the problem, it may be challenging to allocate resources toward finding a solution. Expanding efforts to promote public and provider knowledge of health inequalities may lead to fair resource allocation, eliminating health disparities and generating a positive shift in social justice.

Another suggestion for bringing about positive change in health disparities and social justice is to avoid unnecessary competition. Distinguishing winners and losers via competition, typically with a winner-take-all incentive structure, eventually produces a small number of winners and a large number of losers, leading to social inequality, which in turn creates and sustains health disparities (Chang & Fraser, 2017). For a positive change in health disparities and social justice, we should be focused on eliminating competition which tends to create negative power relationships and thus an antithesis to the goal of health equity. Besides, it is critical to ensure that we engage in constructive competition, ensuring that competition is efficient in controlled circumstances.

Moreover, expanding health coverage is another suggestion for positive change in social justice and health disparities (Ndugga & Artiga, 2021). Health insurance plays a role in determining whether individuals have access to the necessary medical care, how healthy they are, and where they receive medical care. Therefore, to guarantee that all people have access to proper medical care, it is essential to ensure that health insurance is made available to all people. Besides, health insurance coverage is very important to minority groups to change social justice positively and health disparities. It is necessary to make an effort to ensure that current sources of coverage, like Medicaid, are preserved while simultaneously trying to increase additional sources of coverage for individuals who do not have health insurance.

A population with better health needs less medical attention; therefore, providing equitable health care contributes to general improvements in the efficiency of healthcare systems. Inequalities in social and economic status, which have their origins in racism, are the fundamental cause of health disparities. Eliminating health disparities is crucial not only from the social justice and health equality point of view but also for enhancing the nation’s general health and economic success. Some suggestions for positive change in health disparities and social justice include; equal distribution of resources, increasing public and provider awareness, avoiding unnecessary competition, and expanding health coverage.

References

Bediako, S. M., & Griffith, D. M. (2020). Eliminating racial/ethnic health disparities: Reconsidering comparative approaches. UMBC Faculty Collection.

Cao, W., Chen, C., Li, M., Nie, R., Lu, Q., Song, D., … & Wang, X. (2021). Important factors affecting COVID-19 transmission and fatality in metropolises. Public health, 190, 817–823. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-020-01206-8Chang, W. C., & Fraser, J. H. (2017). Cooperate! A paradigm shift for health equity. International journal for equity in health, 16(1), 1–13.

Garay, J. E., & Chiriboga, D. E. (2017). A paradigm shift for socioeconomic justice and health: from focusing on inequalities to aiming at sustainable equity. Public Health, 149, 149-158.

Louis, J. M., Menard, M. K., & Gee, R. E. (2015). Racial and ethnic disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 125(3), 690-694. doi: 10.1097/AOG.0000000000000704

Ndugga, N., & Artiga, S. (2021). Disparities in Health and Health Care: 5 Key Questions and Answers. KFF. Retrieved 29 September 2022, from https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/disparities-in-health-and-health-care-5-key-question-and-answers/.