Cultural Disparities In Health Care

Disparities in health care have long provided challenges and occur in groups of people who receive less or lower quality health care than others which often results in poorer overall health outcomes (KFF.org, 2012). Health Care Disparities refers to a population of people that have a higher burden of illness, injury, disability, or mortality (KFF.org, 2012). The disparity aspect refers to the differences between groups in health coverage, access and or quality of care (KFF.org, 2012). Disparities are commonly viewed by individual races or ethnicities, but they also cross many dimensions and include socioeconomic status, age, location, gender, disability status, and sexual orientation (KFF.org, 2012). Health Care disparities are an important issue to address due to the impact it has on individual groups of people, the overall health care system, and the

The goal of these groups is to group hospitals and physician practices together in order to facilitate and incentivize quality improvement and reduce and or contain care costs. By creating these organizations, racial/ethnic differences may be emphasized in order to encourage patient population participation, which will hopefully reduce costly care fragmentation (Pollack & Armstrong, 2011). Health Care Disparities also need to be addressed through education and community outreach. Health Care organizations need to continuously conduct community outreach initiatives that focus on health and wellness goals for the target patient populations (Umbdenstock & Lofton, 2007). The information also needs to be presented in a format that that the target group will understand. In addition to, health care teams need to continuously undergo training that will assist in developing an overall cultural awareness aimed at achieving positive community