Independent Research Week Nine, Post Two (Synthesis & Connection)

    When looking into health disparities among people of color and their white counterparts, it is very obvious that it is systematic barriers and racism far outside just the healthcare system that perpetuate such issues. It is through living environments, cultural barriers, education gaps and access inequities that health disparities come to affect all individuals of the BIPOC community. Thus, it only makes sense that the solutions that are offered must be just as complex. 

    One of the largest, overarching issues that is highlighted when discussing these disparities is the large difference in life expectancy between BIPOC individuals and their white counterparts. Furthermore, immigrants often come into the nation with health far better than their American born counterparts. However, the large they stay in the United States, the more their life expectancy decreases. This is also caused by a unhealthy culture that is consistent throughout the United States. Two-thirds of black and Latino Americans are expected to be obese by the time they they turn 35, which is much higher than the 57% national average. 

    These gaps can also be caused by the high rates of child poverty within the BIPOC community. While only 11% of white children are raised in poverty, 26% of Latino children and 33% of Black and Native children are brought up in poverty. However, there is a solution to this pervasive problem. For every $100 invested into the public school system, two fewer deaths per 100,000 population were avoided and a one standard deviation change in tax progressivity resulted in 6 fewer deaths per 100,000 population.

    Increase in minimum wage can also greatly increase quality of life. A dollar increase in the minimum wage above the federal minimum was associated with a 1% to 2% decrease in low birth weight and a 4% decrease in post-neonatal mortality. Furthermore, the researchers estimated that if all states in 2014 had increased their minimum wage by one dollar, there would have been 2790 fewer low birth weight births and 518 fewer post-neonatal deaths for the year. 

    However, no matter no important it is to address issues outside of the healthcare system, there are still unavoidable problems that can only be fixed within the system itself. Such issues include the high hospital death rate for women of color. Racial disparities in in-hospital maternal mortality decreased between 2006 and 2015, but significant disparities remain. In 2006 the rate of in-hospital death was 248 percent higher for Black women, 50 percent higher for Hispanic women, and 69 percent higher for Asian/Pacific Islander women than for White women. In 2015, the rate for Blacks was 193 percent higher and the rate for Hispanics was 31 percent higher than the rate for Whites.

    Much of this issue can be broken down into issues within healthcare workers and their own biases and prejudices. Research indicates that rapid and unconscious emotional and neural reactions to Black Americans occur for most Americans within 100 milliseconds, that is, in about one third of the time that it takes for us to blink our eyes (300 to 400 milliseconds). Healthcare workers are not immune to this bias, and oftentimes these biases are far more impactful than the prejudices of other, as they can decide life or death decisions.