Every single person on the planet deserves access to healthcare. Unfortunately, because of a myriad of factors such as social, economic, environmental, and political issues, healthcare has been rendered unequal in societies across the globe. One of the ways to create momentum toward greater equity in healthcare services is to build awareness. That is, at least in part, the aim of this article: to advocate for equity in healthcare for more vulnerable populations.
What Healthcare Equity Is and Is Not
Equity in healthcare would be for every person to have access to fair and responsible treatments to support their health needs. The meeting of this goal requires a collective acknowledgment and social agreement in the public and private sectors to overcome long-standing systemic injustice.
It should be noted that health inequity is not necessarily tied to health inequality. Health inequality refers more to the disparities that may arise from the measuring of care that is provided while inequity is derived from the underlying social, moral, and political issues. Health inequality may be the result of natural occurrences, such as biological and genetic conditions. Where health care services that are distributed in unfair manners — withholding care, access, and educational information— becomes more of an example of healthcare inequity.
Disparities in Health Care Services
The COVID-19 pandemic, though it threw the world into a state of chaos, ironically helped to expose a series of issues that have been plaguing public and private healthcare providers and their institutions for decades. The exposure of the ongoing presence of health disparities, their systems, the people groups, and nations that have suffered because of it, has spurred greater awareness.
The uncovering of these inequalities has shown that injustice is present at nearly every level of healthcare delivery worldwide. Each of the contributing factors mentioned above is complicated by a lack of infrastructure, transportation, money, and insurance providers. While there are fewer instances of disparity in more affluent nations and wealthier demographic groups, there is no group of people that is immune to these disparities. Of the many points, race, gender, age, and the more complex people groups of refugees or immigrants tend to have an increasingly difficult time.
Complications
Health is not influenced by mere biological factors, but also by overlapping social, political, environmental, and economic factors called social determinants. Migration and residential displacement further complicate access to healthcare.
Many elderly, poor, and refugee or immigrant populations experience additional complications due to language comprehension in completing paperwork, and a lack of money and political support. Migrants typically come from countries that are already suffering from economic complications due to corrupt governments, war, poverty, and compromised healthcare systems.
When beginning to consider how something as powerfully disruptive as a war can affect basic needs provisions such as water and food, the list of possible disruptions to equitable healthcare continues to grow. The ripple effects of each of those factors in turn can swell and expand, not just to the individual, but to a community.
Measures Toward Greater Equity
In acknowledgment of the assorted complications that contribute to a lack of health equity, it is best to keep in mind that, in order to bring adequate and positive change to a suffering person or people group, both macro and micro views of the person should be considered. By beginning with a macro perspective of what are the most immediate and basic needs, services, and companies, the public or private can begin to narrow down what needs are of the most immediate concern. Considering that there will always be a lack in some respect, especially for the elderly and immigrant populations, it seems prudent to train professionals in the ability to identify what issues are contributing to and extending the suffering for various persons. Though this can be accomplished through many means and is currently being attended to by hundreds of organizations worldwide by the deployment, facilitation, and distribution of health care services worldwide, more can be done.
One means of encouraging greater equity is by the empowerment of those social groups most at risk. Many of the most threatened people groups simply lack the information and resources to care for their basic needs. Addressing the impacts of age, displacements, and migrational factors in a person’s health through a combined effort of personal and corporate efforts will help to lessen those damaging factors.
Health promotion is one way in which an individual can be more adequately equipped to support themselves during times of stress and displacement. Health promotion is the act of enabling people to have more control over their health and well-being by providing access to resources. This idea helps people to see how health is not merely the absence of illness but instead, actions that can be attended to daily.
This general base of knowledge, when enacted in a consistent manner helps people be able to more easily adapt and cope to the available environment no matter the situation. When paired with the efforts and resources made available from social service providers, the effects of those professionals can be multiplied.
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This content is made possible by Andrew Deen.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
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