Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhumane.” Profound racial and economic disparities in health have long been the norm in the United States. Continuing to perpetuate economic and racial inequalities results in different health outcomes for marginalized communities. Despite efforts to improve healthcare access, racial and economic disparities persist. Unequal health has been an ongoing issue for decades and there are many pieces involved that have created this situation. This paper explores the systemic factors that contribute to racial and economic differences in healthcare, including biases and the lack of diversity in healthcare leadership. Racial inequality is …show more content…
They are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life. ” Other influences often include economic policies, development agendas, social norms, social policies, racism, etc. The CDC divides each state into sections, usually by zip code or county. People cannot control certain factors in their lives like where they were born, where they grew up, and the social norms/structure of where they are. “Social determinants of health (SDOH) impact 80% of health outcomes from acute to chronic disorders”(Greer p.1). So people’s health care quality is already mostly determined when they are born. In a research project by Alaya Linton, she found this statistic, “57% of Americans ages 18 to 42 live where they grew up. An even greater percentage live near their parents, 62%.” So many Americans still live where they were born so they are still living in their original SDoH area which affects their health care quality and seeing as they don’t move they are stuck in the same cycle of quality of …show more content…
Southern states have a larger African American population and northern states have higher White populations. This wouldn’t be a factor in healthcare inequalities if there wasn’t such a large gap in the annual salary between the two. The article “Household Income of White Families” discusses the average income for white people in 2022, it states, “The median income in 2022 was at 81,060 U.S. dollars for white, non-Hispanic families” (Statistica p.1). While another statistic from the article “Snapshots of Black and White Disparities” says, “The median income for Black households was $52,860, 32% lower than that of white households” (Davis, Filipovic p.1). Poorer states with less adequate healthcare tend to have a larger African-American population because they are being paid less than Caucasian people. Being paid less also makes it more difficult for African-American families to have the ability to move somewhere with better healthcare because the cost of living in those other areas is much higher, which gets them stuck in the perpetual cycle of low-quality