scholarly journals Examining the Role of Family History of US Enslavement in Health Care System Distrust Today

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-424
Author(s):  
Lorraine T. Dean ◽  
Genee S. Smith

Objective: Black/African American people have long reported high, albeit warranted, distrust of the US health care system (HCS); however, Blacks/African Americans are not a homogenous racial/ethnic group. Little in­formation is available on how the subgroup of Black Americans whose families suffered under US chattel slavery, here called De­scendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States (DAEUS), view health care institu­tions. We compared knowledge of unethical treatment and HCS distrust among DAEUS and non-DAEUS.Design and Setting: A cross-sectional random-digit dialing survey was adminis­tered in 2005 to Blacks/African Americans, aged 21-75 years, from the University of Pennsylvania Clinical Practices in Philadel­phia, Penn.Participants: Blacks/African Americans self-reported a family history of persons enslaved in the US (DAEUS) or no family history of persons enslaved in the US (non- DAEUS).Main Outcome Measures: HCS distrust was measured by a validated scale assessing perceptions of unethical experimentation and active or passive discrimination.Methods: We compared responses to the HCS distrust scale using Fisher’s exact and t-tests.Results: Of 89 respondents, 57% self-re­ported being DAEUS. A greater percentage of DAEUS reported knowledge of unethical treatment than non-DAEUS (56% vs 21%; P<.001), were significantly more likely to express distrust, and to endorse the pres­ence of covert (eg, insurance-based) than overt forms (eg, race-based) of discrimina­tion by the HCS.Conclusions: DAEUS express greater HCS distrust than non-DAEUS, patterned by awareness of unethical treatment and passive discrimination. Understanding how long-term exposure to US institutions influ­ences health is critical to resolving dispari­ties for all Black/African American groups. Rectifying past injustices through repara­tive institutional measures may improve DAEUS’ trust and engagement with the US HCS.Ethn Dis. 2021:31(3):417-424; doi:10.18865/ed.31.3.417

2019 ◽  
Vol 109 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Schlottmann ◽  
P. D. Strassle ◽  
A. L. Cairns ◽  
F. A. M. Herbella ◽  
A. Fichera ◽  
...  

Background and Aims: Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer among both men and women in the United States. We aimed to determine racial and socioeconomic disparities in emergent colectomy rates for colorectal cancer in the US Health Care system. Material and Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of the National Inpatient Sample including adult patients (⩾18 years) diagnosed with colorectal cancer, and who underwent colorectal resection while admitted between 2008 and 2015. Multivariable logistic and linear regression were used to assess the association between emergent admissions, compared to elective admissions, and postoperative outcomes. Results: A total of 141,641 hospitalizations were included: 93,775 (66%) were elective admissions and 47,866 (34%) were emergent admissions. Black patients were more likely to undergo emergent colectomy, compared to white patients (42% vs 32%, p < 0.0001). Medicaid and Medicare patients were also more likely to have an emergent colectomy, compared to private insurance (47% and 36% vs 25%, respectively, p < 0.0001), as were patients with low household income, compared to highest (38% vs 31%, p < 0.0001). Emergent procedures were less likely to be laparoscopic (19% vs 38%, p < 0.0001). Patients undergoing emergent colectomy were significantly more likely to have postoperative venous thromboembolism, wound complications, infection, bleeding, cardiac failure, renal failure, respiratory failure, shock, and inpatient mortality. Conclusion: There are significant racial and socioeconomic disparities in emergent colectomy rates for colorectal cancer. Efforts to reduce this disparity in colorectal cancer surgery patients should be prioritized to improve outcomes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (Supplement_4) ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Jarman

Abstract Background The United States is effectively a laboratory for ways to produce public goods, such as public health, on the cheap. Its c. 90,000 governments compete for residents, businesses, taxes, development, and jobs while also trying to compensate for the lack of universal health care coverage. They all have structural incentives to provide services as cheaply as possible. The effects are diverse and poorly mapped. They can mean innovation in organizational forms, a different and typically less expensive skill mix among the workers, poor quality, or simple under provision. The exact mix can often be hard to identify. It can also mean extreme responsiveness to funding from higher levels of government such as the states or federal government. Methods A comparative historical analysis (CHA) based on government documents, law, and secondary sources. Results The distinctively expansive scope of US public health actions is largely due to the country’s failure to establish a universal health care system, and the diversity of US public health tasks reflects local adaptation of tens of thousands of governments. This means that public health in the United States retains much of the activity it had in, for example, the UK before the establishment of the US. In particular, and even in states that accepted the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), local public health departments provide a substantial amount of direct care and fill in for gaps in health care provision. Conclusions The US public health system is highly fragmented like the governments that run it, and therefore diverse. Reflecting the failures of the US health care system, it carries out many more tasks that in other countries are seen as health, especially primary, care.


2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Fletcher ◽  
Jane Marriott

Two narratives have emerged to describe recent health care reforms in the United States of America (US) and the United Kingdom (UK). One narrative speaks of revolution, that the adoptions of the Affordable Care Act 2010 (ACA) in the US, and the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (HSCA) in the UK, have resulted in fundamental, large-scale philosophical, political and legal change in the jurisdictions’ respective health care systems. The other narrative evokes evolution, identifying each new legislative scheme as a natural development of existing governance structures. Policymakers in both the US and UK face the problem of a health care system which, as traditionally envisaged, cannot offer universal access to health care at a reasonable, or politically acceptable, price


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Berlinger ◽  
Michael K. Gusmano ◽  
Eva Turbiner

AbstractWhere do poor people in the United States (US) go when they get sick? Often, they go to Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and hospital emergency departments. Even after the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), these safety-net health care organizations will continue to play a crucial role in the US health care system. FQHCs have long grappled with some of the biggest questions facing the US health care system and their leaders and clinicians face ethical challenges in everyday practice. Ethical and policy challenges in the US health care safety-net are not usually ‘tragic choices’ involving the allocation of transplantable organs, or ventilators during a pandemic. They are everyday choices with a tragic dimension because, even with the adoption of the ACA, the US has not yet decided whether poor people deserve a ‘home’ or a ‘net’ when they are sick, and whether even a net should be in good repair.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Eric Flanagan

The United States is unique among countries with health care systems that rely primarily on private insurance companies because there are generally no regulations that mandate a standard fee schedule for health care services. The prevalence of multiple private and public insurers is known as a multi-payer system. Other countries that have multiple payers set prices unilaterally, as is the case in Japan, or through negotiations between payers and providers, as is the case in Germany. The outcome is a uniform set of prices that applies to all payers within a single hospital. This framework is known as all-payer rate setting. This paper explains how all-payer rate setting regulation can mitigate several problems plaguing the US health care system. Examples include cost shifting, price discrimination, and provider market leverage. The paper then analyzes how these problems negatively affect the US health care system. Finally, the benefits of all-payer rate setting are explained, followed by the downsides (or tradeoffs) of such a system.


Author(s):  
Anthony B. Pinn

This chapter explores the history of humanism within African American communities. It positions humanist thinking and humanism-inspired activism as a significant way in which people of African descent in the United States have addressed issues of racial injustice. Beginning with critiques of theism found within the blues, moving through developments such as the literature produced by Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, and others, to political activists such as W. E. B. DuBois and A. Philip Randolph, to organized humanism in the form of African American involvement in the Unitarian Universalist Association, African Americans for Humanism, and so on, this chapter presents the historical and institutional development of African American humanism.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-245
Author(s):  
Daniela Moşoiu

Abstract Persons suffering from chronic and life limiting illnesses often have unrelieved symptoms such as pain, depression, fatigue, and psychosocial and spiritual distress. In Romania they are frequently left in the care of their families with little support from the health care system. It seems a paradox that those who are the sickest persons in a country find little place in the health care system. This article presents palliative care as a solution to the suffering for these patients and their families by describing the concept, models of services, its beneficiaries and benefits and presenting the history of development of hospice and palliative care worldwide and in Romania.


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