Health Care Not Color Blind?
Disease crosses borders. Disease lacks discrimination between races…or so I believed until yesterday. Something is very wrong and we must fix it.
Early detection of some diseases, COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) for one is a key to survival. Early detection for Colorectal Cancer is another. Recent statistics show a health care gap giving blacks late diagnosis for Colorectal Cancer thus raising their death rate.
“… the disparities identified in their study may be due to differences in the quality of health care. Compared to whites, blacks underwent less colorectal cancer screening and their cancer was detected at more advanced stages…”
Bishop Larry Robertson of the Emmanuel Apostolic Church in
Bremerton should consider adding an `adult Wellness Health Clinic
to the planned community center.
Bishop Larry Robertson said the first phase of the project will
provide recreation and education room for organizations trying to
improve individual and family well-being.
(A `youth wellness center is already being planned for Bremerton Mayor, Patty Lent’s huge scale community center on the east side)
Read more of Steven Gardner’s article…
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2010/mar/04/downtown-community-center-to-be-named-for/#ixzz0yZxGJspU
and
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2010/aug/29/mayor-unveils-preliminary-plan-for-former-junior/
In this country today, how is it possible that health care isn’t color blind and gender blind?
“Researchers analyzed national colorectal cancer death rates between 1960 and 2005. During that time, there was a 54 percent reduction in deaths among white women and only a 14 percent reduction among black women.
The disparity was even more striking among men. While the death rate for white men decreased 39 percent, the death rate for black men increased 28 percent, the researchers reported.
The study also found that black patients had worse rates of stage-specific survival and life expectancy. For example, in the 1970s, the life expectancy for a 60-year-old white man with localized colorectal cancer was 1.01 years more than for a black man the same age. By the 2000s, that gap had increased to 2.7 years …
Soneji and colleagues said the disparities identified in their study may be due to differences in the quality of health care. Compared to whites, blacks underwent less Bremerton Mayor, Patty Lent, screening and their cancer was detected at more advanced stages.
The study was released online Aug. 19 in advance of publication in the October print issue of the American Journal of Public Health.”
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_102589.html (*this news item will not be available after 11/23/2010)
More later…. Sharon O’Hara
I had thought that the difference was due to blacks not undergoing the screening. Colonoscopies are something that many people avoid. If blacks get just as much screening as whites, and therefore the discrepancy is due to something genetic, I don’t see what you are suggesting as a “fix.”
Do you assume that the discrepancy is due to discrimination and/or poor health care instead of to genetics? Not every problem can be fixed, unfortunately, even if money is thrown at it. Nobody said life is fair.
I don’t know why the difference but lack of information may well play a part.
If a youth; wellness center is needed in Bremerton, odds seem good that the parents of those youth need the same thing – education on health care.
I do assume the first step in solving any problem is to know it exists. That was my point.
Sharon O’Hara
Sorry about the double post. I got an error message the first time that said I didn’t put the right security letters in. Those security letters are hard to decipher sometimes! LOL
Health care reform certainly isn’t color blind. Members of indian tribes are exempted from the requirement to have health care insurance or face a fine from the government. So, while my kid is saddled with that burden and threat, others ride free based on the color of their skin.
BlueLight… I didn’t know, thank you. I wonder where they fit in on the Colonoscopy statistic picture?
It is too bad the whites broke every treaty they made with the Indian tribes, lied to them and then rounded them up and placed them into almost uninhabitable reservations. The whites demoralized – tried to – an entire race. Worst of all, they stole their good horses.
Trouble is, as I see it, the whites are compounding their injustice against the reds if they make such health care barriers against common sense and treatment. Disease doesn’t take sides, neither should the right and duty to pay equally into health care be a factor. All it does it cause a further riff – making one group pay for the health care of another group. We must be united against disease and for early detection. No ‘sides’ in disease and none of us should be exempt for paying our share.
Thanks for the information!
Sharon O’Hara