Introduction
Health promotion and overall satisfaction with one’s life have always been some of the key notions in both personal and social agendas. However, it is always the government that plays a crucial role in terms of ensuring policies aimed at securing these life aspects for the population. Hence, over the past decades, through active intervention in public health promotion across the state, the overall life longevity has been increased by almost ten years, rapidly increasing the healthcare access rate among citizens (DeSalvo et al., 2017). However, if previously, major attention was drawn to the issues directly correlated with health promotion, today’s focus is also placed on the social issues that seemingly have a minor impact on the overall public health state. A prime example of such a problem is the issue of racism tackling US society today at a considerably high rate. In terms of the following paper, racism will be analyzed in the public health framework in order to outline major recommendations towards the issue resolution.
Main body
The American Public Health Association (APHA) claims racism to be one of the major public health issues due to its intervention in the fundamental human right of equal access to healthcare. Thus, while racism entirely disrupts the paradigm of equality by putting some people at an unfair disadvantage because of the skin color, the idea of proportionate access to healthcare services remains utopian (APHA, n.d.). Currently, the issue primarily tackles Black, Latin, Asian, and Native American population despite the fact they constitute a significant part of the overall state population.
One of the major reasons behind this issue’s rapid development is its occurrence on all the social levels within the state. Local, state, and national authorities deal with racism and discrimination incidence on a daily basis, making it barely possible to eradicate the issue from the social behavior patterns. Moreover, the issue is faced on both levels of interpersonal relations and legislative policies (law enforcement’s violent actions towards people of a different race). Various researchers claim the direct correspondence between the issue of racism and people’s chronic disease prevalence and mortality rates (Cobbinah & Lewis, 2018). Such interdependence is primarily caused by the following factors:
- Chronic violence-related stress. Various race groups face discrimination every day, finding it complicated to live a fulfilled life when their actions are judged by other people who put their biased labels on them. As a result, many people suffer from the constant stress that influences both mental and physical health, developing a variety of chronic diseases and risks for cardiovascular disease incidence.
- Physical violence. Aggression targeted at racial minorities, especially when it comes to the Black Americans, frequently leads to shootings and fights that result in various injuries and even fatalities.
- Inconsistent healthcare provision patterns. Increasing rates of interpersonal racism and bias in relationship with patients often lead to poor quality of the provided healthcare. Such an attitude results in tendencies causing the minorities’ health conditions deterioration and lack of proper counseling (Serchen et al., 2020).
Hence, it might be outlined that one of the major factors to deal with in terms of racism in public health is monitoring the direct expression of violent actions towards racial minorities. In order to achieve this, it is vitally important to establish proper communication with both authorities and activists willing to stop racism. Since racism is affecting practically every authority level within the country, the first steps towards its combating should take place on the municipal level, steadily going up to the top of the hierarchy. The patterns of such action plans might be taken from European practice, where municipal authorities established a set of rules and policies to be introduced in terms of the fight against racism and discrimination (ECCAR, n.d.). Hence, some of the major policies introduced should be as follows:
- In collaboration with the city council and major legislative branches, a monitoring system to define that acts of racism and discrimination should be established. When including healthcare establishments, authorities will have the chance to make sure that people are not suffering from implicit bias when cooperating with medical representatives. Moreover, the monitoring system will be helpful in terms of racism detection and immediate elimination from public health facilities.
- Educational, medical, and other socially-engaging facilities should be included in the anti-racism program agenda in order to reduce citizens’ ignorance or lack of knowledge on the subject. With the help of various counseling mechanisms, there would be a lower chance for the racial minorities to experience violence-related stress and implicit discrimination in the healthcare facilities.
- Setting up research committees in terms of the city councils’ social work is of paramount importance for the further development of the introduced policies and actions aimed at combating racism. The following committees, while being in charge of collecting relevant data on racism incidence in the area, would be able to outline major areas of weakness that influence overall public health promotion and execution.
Conclusion
Taking everything into consideration, it might be concluded that among a variety of existing issues tackling public health today, racism should be by no means undermined. On the contrary, the scopes of its impact on public health development and promotion across the state are steadily growing, along with the national resentment. Hence, starting from the municipal level, policies on combating racism and discrimination should be introduced in order to improve the existing data on their negative impact on healthcare.
References
APHA. (n.d.). Racism and health. Web.
Cobbinah, S. S., & Lewis, J. (2018). Racism & health: a public health perspective on racial discrimination. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 24(5), 995-998.
DeSalvo, K. B., Wang, Y. C., Harris, A., Auerbach, J., Koo, D., & O’Carroll, P. (2017). Peer reviewed: Public Health 3.0: a call to action for public health to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Preventing Chronic Disease, 14.
ECCAR. (n.d.). 10 points plan of action to fight racism on the municipal level in Europe. Web.
Serchen, J., Doherty, R., Atiq, O., & Hilden, D. (2020). Racism and health in the United States: a policy statement from the American College of Physicians. Annals of Internal Medicine.