The Importance Of Health Disparity In Health Care

Overview:
Health disparity is one of the burdens that contributes to our healthcare system in providing equal healthcare to everyone regarding of race, age, race, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status to achieve good health. Research reveals that racial and ethnic minorities are likely to receive lower quality of healthcare services than white Americans.

The goal of this lesson is to explore how we can improve communication to eliminate language barriers between healthcare providers and patients in our organization and to establish culturally and linguistically appropriate goals, that provide safe, equal, and quality care to all our clients regardless of race, ethnic, or socioeconomic status. At the end of this lesson we should be

• Illustrate cultural bias, generalization and cultural Stereotype. Show the medical staff some pictures and have the class address bias, stereotyping, generalization: o Picture of a Kenyan male and woman winning the Chicago Marathon: “Some Kenyans are good at running Marathons” vs “All Kenyans are good at runners.”
• Share the Danger of a single story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
• Share the story of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures.
• Learn about the language barrier in this case and be able to see the situation from Lia Lee parent’s point of view and the medical staff at Merced Community Medical Center point of view.
• Define language barrier and give an example of language barrier
• Ways to improve communication and reduce language barrier. Example, use of qualified medical interpreters.
• Show the 3 minute video of the story Arturo Gonzalez drug overdose and how using a qualified medical interpreter could have prevented the overdose.
• Ask each person what they learned about themselves and how it will help them communicate with patients and improve quality care.