African American Inequalities In Health Care

women, in particular, have faced and still face intersecting challenges navigating both racial and gender inequalities within healthcare systems.

African Americans make up 13.3% of the population that bear the burden of poor health status in the U.S. Differences in population health between African Americans and non-African Americans have been linked to both ‘downstream’ factors, such as unequal clinical care, and ‘upstream’ factors, such as unequal education, income inequality and historical injustices that manifest through structured systems of inequity. African Americans, based on years of research and studies, are considered the least healthy ethnic group in the United States according to the article from Springer link, “Improving the …show more content…
Whites" according to “Improving the health of African Americans in the USA: an overdue opportunity for social justice.” Young black males often face higher rates of death by gunshot compared to their white peers, as firearm homicides is a leading cause for African American male deaths. Not just from gun violence, the article mentions that black children are twenty times more likely to witness domestic violence and suffer maltreatment. These factors play major parts in both the physical and mental well-being of black children, showing how the quality of health for African Americans is determined at an early age. In most cases, health disparities impacting African Americans span across the course of life. Birth Violence reveals the unquestionable ethnic disparity. Another example of this is the high rate of violence that African American women face. African Americans reported higher rates of experiencing rape and physical …show more content…
This article also mentions that African American women are more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes, experience higher infant mortality rates and have low birth weight babies due to the lack of prenatal care that they receive. African American women face health and sociocultural challenges and the cumulative impact of coping with chronic stress over time, described as weathering in the journal article. Additionally, African American women experience interwoven complexities of racism, genderism, ageism, and classism. It is said in the Springer Link article that “poverty, low education, unemployment, violence, insecurity, and environmental exposures contribute to poor reproductive health and birth outcomes among black women.” Some investigators hypothesize racism is the fundamental cause of racial disparities. Mentioned in the “Improving the health of African Americans in the USA” article in 2002, black women trailed white women in receiving prenatal care in the first trimester, 75% vs. 89%. In 2008, 59.1% of African American women giving birth to live babies had prenatal care compared to the 72.2% of white women. It is also reported that black women are less likely to receive advice from prenatal care providers about smoking and alcohol use and less counseling regarding

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