Unit 7 Assignment: Creating Healthy Communities Worksheet

Leading Causes of Death

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The minority/racial group from the leading causes of death by race in the USA are the American Indians/ Alaska natives. The population of these races is about 2.9 percent of the US population. Those who are under the age of 18 and below are about 32 percent compared to the total population which has 24 percent that are below 18 years of age. The median age of the two is about 26 in contrast with the entire nation which is 37 (Heron, 2016). The states with the highest population of these tribes are Alaska with 19.5 %, New Mexico with 10.7% and Oklahoma State with 12.9%. In terms of education, the numbers of students who have joined school have doubled in the past 3 decades. 5 percent of the American Indians and the Alaska natives have graduated and have professional degrees (Murphy, 2013). Out of 19 percent of the US population, only 9 percent have received bachelor’s degree. Business wise, the two races have increased their capability to do business by a 17.9 percent. They made around $34.5 in the year 2002, which was an increase in a percentage of 28.3 percent in the same year. This meant that their housing and infrastructure developed with an increase of 39 percent between 1997 and 2001. The Indian, states tribes, countries and the bureau of Indian affairs own around 104,000 miles of public roads. The number of motor vehicle crashes increased compared to that of the nation which decreased by 2.2 percent. There are 199 reservations that contain timberland while woodland has a reservation of 185 (Kochanek, 2011).

The top ten leading causes of death in the two races include;

1. Heart disease which is 18.9%

2. Cancer which takes around 18.6%

3. Unintentional injuries 13.5%

4. Diabetes 5.1%

5. Chronic liver disease 5.0%

6. Chronic lower respiratory disease 4.1%

7. Suicide 4.0%

8. Stroke 3.0%

9. Homicide 2.4%

10. Influenza and pneumonia 2.0%

Cultural competency is basically a set of policies, behaviors, and attitudes that allows cross- cultural groups to work well in an effective way (Murphy, 2013). These includes the languages, values, human behaviors, believes in terms of religious backgrounds, and ethic perceptions. Cultural competency is important because it improves and makes it possible for people from all tribe to be able to access health care. It will be able to easily eliminate disparities that are involved with health and race (Kochanek, 2011).

With cultural competency, language barrier will not become a problem for people from different tribes that do not speak the same language to access health care (Heron, 2016). It is said that Latinos are more likely to be affected when to get help in influenza vaccination because of the language barrier (Murphy, 2013). Non English speaking tribes find it hard to interpret medical advice from English speaking doctors. It also leads to poor comprehension and lower quality of health care. This affects a lot the non-English speaking tribes in the US who are around 37 million adults. It is good to clearly interpret well to patients to help them in understand what disease they are suffering from and how to avoid it.

Addressing low literacy is also a way to improve or addressing the health problems in specific populations (Kochanek, 2011). The elderly are the most affected when it comes to this factor. Patients who suffer from chronic disease will have to make complex decisions about how to manage their conditions. The most affected tribes are tribes that have are minority in terms of race and ethnic background. This is because they lack good education and opportunities leading to cultural and language barrier. It’s easier for people with low literacy to not understand the instructions and make good decisions of their health. Cultural competency will address this issue and people will have knowledge and gain opportunities for going to school. This will reduce the level of literacy among specific populations (Kochanek, 2011).

Cultural competency will help reduce the difference that is found when it comes to different race and ethnicity accessing health care. Having regular checkups is very important to ensure that you know the status of your health (Murphy, 2013). A research showed that a higher number of nonwhites in the US do not regularly visit the doctors and neither do they have insurance cover. It’s showed that Latinos were the highest number of people who never had interest in ensuring they had checkups (Kochanek, 2011).

Cultural competency leads to patient satisfaction. Patients who are suffering from chronic diseases need more of health care and interaction. Therefore it’s very important to ensure that they continue the interaction with the doctors (Kochanek, 2011). African Americans are reported to have poor treatment by the doctors while they visit health cares. It is said that they are rudely talked to, ignored and talked down. This meant that cultural competency was not practiced and hence they were seen not fit to be treated with a same manner as the whites. A statistic showed that, 1 percent of the whites thought all other races would have been treated well if they were whites. While 15 percent of the African American thought they would have been treated well if they were whites (Murphy, 2013).

This means that when diversity increases, challenges of health care will decrease an opportunities will increase. Cultural competence will reduce deaths that are related to bad health care (Heron, 2016). This will improve the relation and reception of people in health cares and also the mentality that is negative when it comes to treating patients.

The best reasons to target specific populations with health information that they relate to is because they have knowledge about it. Having an education background can help a lot in understanding on how to close the gap for ethnic minority. This will improve on how well give health care and the resources to provide healthcare (Kochanek, 2011). The second reason is to understand on how to allocate resources. Allocation resources will help the delivery of health care to the patients. According to the 2000 act that was to eliminate unlawful discrimination laid a policy that promoted racial equality. This meant that the allocation was to be done in an equal manner (Heron, 2016).

References

Heron, M. (2016). Deaths: Leading Causes for 2013. National vital statistics reports: from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System, 65(2), 1-14.

Kochanek, K. D., Xu, J., Murphy, S. L., Miniño, A. M., & Kung, H. C. (2011). Deaths: final data for 2009. National vital statistics reports: from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System, 60(3), 1-116.

Murphy, S. L., Xu, J., & Kochanek, K. D. (2013). Deaths: final data for 2010. National vital statistics reports: from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System, 61(4), 1-117.