Disparity In Health

Recent evidence suggests that the health of the population in the United States continues to improve. However, over the past decades, the United Stated has seen a widespread disparity in the society, wealth, education, race and gender. Income and wealth are unevenly distributed and this distribution leads to widespread health disparities across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic status groups. In addition, a multitude of economic, social, and political factors combined cause a health disparity between those groups 1. The United States is known for its diversity and unfortunately is an outstanding example of inequality in health. One of the most dramatic and important demographic trends affecting the United States is the rapid growth of the Hispanic
A study using pooled National Health Interview Surveys from 1999 to 2001 discovered that Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, and other Hispanics demonstrated significantly less access to health care as compared to non-Hispanic whites with an immigrant status. According to the study, socioeconomic status was an important factor in greater access to regular and high-quality health care for Hispanics. For example, approximately 72 percent of Hispanics reported having a regular source of care compared to 84 percent of non-Hispanic whites with an immigrant status. However, racial and ethnic differences diminished as income increased. In families with a yearly income of less than $20,000, about 63 percent of Hispanics had a regular source of care compared with approximately 75 percent of non-Hispanic whites with an immigrant status 3. This indicates larger issues of disparities in access to care due to socioeconomic
Based on analysis of data from 2007 California Health Interview Survey, Baby-Boom cohort of Californians documents a health and socioeconomic disparities between U.S.-born non-Hispanic whites and Mexican-origin populations. The results show that poverty and low education are associated with worse health and have the strongest effects on developing diabetes among Mexican-origin populations 5. A study that used the database from the Hispanic Established Population for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly (HEPESE) of 3,050 non-institutionalized Mexican Americans aged 65 years from 1993 to1994 to determine the number of individuals who were diagnosed with diabetes showed that English-speaking respondents with high socioeconomic status have a lower risk of developing diabetes than Spanish-speaking with low socioeconomic status from 1st to 3rd generation. The study demonstrated that high socioeconomic status of individuals and increased exposure to the U.S. culture led to decreased risk of developing diabetes. Thus, increased cultural assimilation, which was measured by language preference was a protective factor for developing diabetes among high socioeconomic status of Mexican Americans 6. Another study showed that higher percentages of Spanish-speaking and Bilingual Hispanics had a low education, income, and occupation and therefore have been