Health Disperity

1. Use the 19 social categories in the Journal of Transcultural Nursing (vol. 21) to assist you in defining your social status.
2. Describe and asses your personal culture of origin, and analyze your cultural habits and its effect on health.
3. What are the traditional beliefs and values that are beneficial or not beneficial to generations influenced under the culture;  describe the aspects of health care practice and systems related to this culture
4. Examine health care disparities in this culture in a chosen topics and populations

PLS CAN YOU ADD TWO MORE PAGES TO THE PAPER ATTACHED,AND CAN YOU CHANGE MY ORIGIN TO AFRICAN NOT AMISH. PLS ADD THOSE SUBHEADINGS SEE ATTCHED RUBRIC AND OLD PAPER

HEALTH DISPARITIES

Health disparities is well understood as the specific differences of a population in the existence of health outcomes, disease, health care access and value of health care services which exist across ethnic and racial groups. Disparities may stand for inefficiency within the system of health care and thus accounting for avoidable costs (Douglas & Marilyn & Pacquiao & Dula, 2011). Numerous factors lead to ethnic, socioeconomic, and racial disparities that include insufficient access to care, community features like violence and poverty, reduced quality of care and individual behaviors.

The personal status can be termed as interesting in the sense that is determined by the primitive living of my community. Based on a personal belief, education is very important in the lives of human beings because every individual have their role to play in the betterment of the society and world at large. Thus, I cherish knowledge a lot and this has added my sense of reasoning and living. Through attainment of education, my social status quite elevated because of shunning some primitive mentality and embracing modernity. In addition, I have attained various assets through income generated from employment after finishing my career course. My social status has attracted most associates of the same caliber and has helped in gaining respect and preference in our society costs (Douglas & Marilyn & Pacquiao & Dula, 2011). In the set up of our cultural group, most people are still hold on the primitive lifestyle of religion that hinders them from modernity and yet they are learning to appreciate the contemporary gifts from their learned children. This is evidenced by the fact that regardless of being quite different from our original culture in terms of behavior and some practices, I hold an important position in the community leadership and decision making. The important elderly meetings cannot be held without my approval and presence, irrespective of my young age. The elders also look upon me to mentor their young sons and daughters through motivational speaking that encourages them to embrace learning. The success of my hard work is considered their success and every time the community holds a fund-raiser, they count on me to help them gather a reasonable amount of funds from friends of my own class.

Having come from an Amish culture, one can simply understand the extent of backwardness involved especially in the aspect of medication. Our culture originated from Christianity beliefs that existed in Europe immediately after the reformation of protestant. This community is based on a unique culture that doesn’t match with any other in the United States. The members of the group are religious as well as hard-working and they value humility and primarily focus on maintaining family as well as community values. Most of the members of our community are farmers, which they derive from their religion. For instance, the farming part is derived from the bible where God told Adam and Eve to cultivate and dress the garden. In addition, some of the members of our community work as carpenters, laborers, carriage makers as well as craftsmen. This indicates their creativity and hard-work that existed within the community (Barr, 2008). They however had the perception of working on their own farms and home yards rather than working for outsiders. The level of formal education of the Amish people reaches up to the eighth grade and they are not allowed to have certificates for their education. This is because they believe in simplicity as per their religious teachings (Barrett, 2001). The religious reservations of this culture are brought about by their doubtfulness of the government offer of sponsorship in religion and baptism of infants. This is because they believed that the practice was against the Christ’s teachings from the New Testament.

Some of the cultural tendencies have had personal impact and as a result have affected health perceptions. Regardless of my education level and respect to the physicians, going to hospitals for minor check-ups is very rare. I would only consider attending medical check-up when I feel as if the condition is getting critical. Our culture taught us to avoid running to hospitals or doctors every time we feel ill because in our midst are people with the power of healing and we can also medicate ourselves at home through herbal medication. Thus, medical consultation becomes the last option to me and my community, being an effect of belief of simplicity (Banks & Benchot, 2001). This is a habit that I have tried to eliminate without any success and only realize the repeat of the same after it is over. Physicians suggest that this is a risky practice on one’s health because regular check-ups are important to every individual so that any simple or complicated ailment can be detected as soon as possible. However, the people in our community starts with application of faith, then own treatment and finally medical consultation, a practice that have been applied personally and caused serious effects like taking medication for long and body getting very weak.

Some of the traditional beliefs of our culture are very important in growth and development of upcoming generations. Firstly, religion is a very crucial aspect in the lives of human being and the foundation of the roots enables children to grow morally upright. The values of simplicity, humility and hard-work enable them to live in contentment and greed in not their portion. However, the culture fails completely in the health care practice, which may emerge into serious and health problems especially in the contemporary world where physical complications are cropping up. Our culture is faced with numerous health issues that lead to death because of the community’s ignorance of medication, and belief that death is natural to man. The Amish still fancy the folk medicine and home remedies that they had carried from their home country. Moreover, there was a belief that some people had inherited power to heal through various means and they would be prayed for to receive healing. In Amish community we embrace herbal treatment and cure, which may not be fully guaranteed to be effective. Some of beliefs that seem misleading have also participated in deteriorating people’s health (Van, 2009). For instance, this culture believed that some diseases were as a result of sin and is meant to punish people. In this case, they would not take their relatives to hospital as they watch the punishment taking place, which may lead to a premature death.

This community bears a lot of Health care disparities that would have been avoided if more effective measures were considered. The Amish lose money and other resources to medical exploitation and quackery fraud. The modern health impostors have an expertise in sales and they use scientific terms that target the Amish through bible scriptures. The quacks introduce false cures that much Amish community believes, resulting to countless frauds and leaving the sick in the same condition. Moreover, the means of transport affects our community that uses horses and buggies to travel. A medical appointment may be delayed in case of a failure of a horse to leave a barnyard (Sagar, 2012). Since most of our community lives in rural setting and they lack vehicles to travel, bad weather can affect their access to health and yet most of them do not have telephones to communicate. Due to their simple lifestyle, the community may lack adequate funds to cater for their medication.