Chronic Illnesses
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Chronic Illnesses
A chronic illness is a health disease that has a long-lasting effect or an illness that comes from time to time. These chronic conditions often last up to three months or more; hence they require special medical attention and limited daily activities. Many chronic conditions are caused by unhealthy risky behaviors such as drug abuse, inadequate physical activities, and poor nutrition. This paper discusses the best cost-effective intervention strategies health-care organizations can put in place to eliminate health disparities.
Intervention Strategies
Due to health disparities, chronic conditions such as cancer, obesity, and cardiovascular disease increase rapidly. Individuals with a low socioeconomic status experience significant health disparities due to a lack of employment (Thornton et al., 2016). And so, to reduce this disparity, health-care organizations should improve access to high-quality education, which will undoubtedly improve health. Also, there is consistent evidence that early childhood education has positive impacts on parents and children by addressing health disparities and producing a profitable investment return.
Health-care organizations can put in place interventions that target individual factors such as improving one’s lifestyle behavior and improving one’s health, enabling easy access to adequate food and resources for employment. Additionally, the organization can come up with health programs that support issues like domestic violence. These health programs should focus on specific individuals and groups to improve their health. Racial and ethnic minorities such as African-Americans undergo massive health disparities; therefore, interventions curbing the issue of discrimination of races are crucial (Purnell et al., 2016). However, these interventions do not address social determinants like poverty, which cause persistence in health disparities. Therefore, a health organization needs to come up with interventions that deal with socioeconomic factors.
Excessive use of alcohol is risky behavior that causes chronic conditions; hence, health organizations can develop interventions that address the density and distribution of alcohol outlets. Similarly, the Centers for Disease Control provides interventions that control alcohol distribution to reduce alcohol intake and drug abuse among individuals, therefore, reducing the risk of contracting chronic conditions (Brown et al.,2019). The quality of housing also alters the health conditions of individuals. Due to this, organizations should build house mobility programs to increase access for families with low income to safer neighborhoods and economic opportunities. These house mobility programs should also aid in decreasing substance use and increase employment rates.
To reduce the increase in chronic conditions, health organizations should play a role in implementing employment opportunities. This is because employment often has negative and positive effects on health, such as chronic stress. Civil Rights Policies’ research has proved that access to proper medical care and equal access to employment increased the expectancy of life between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s (Thornton et al., 2016). Employment interventions focus on vulnerable groups and individuals, including people of low socioeconomic status and people with chronic mental illness; therefore, health disparities in these populations are prone to reduce.
Conclusion
The reduction and elimination of health disparities have critical economic impacts; for instance, reducing disparities in morbidity for individuals with a low level of education or no education at all would have a high economic value. Also, racial and ethnic disparities elimination reduces medical care costs. Lastly, interventions curbing employment would possibly promote long term health results.
References
Brown, A. F., Ma, G. X., Miranda. J., Eng. E., Castille. D., Beockoe. T. Jones. P., Airhihonbuwa, C. O., Farhat. T., Zhu. L., Trinh. C. (2019).Structural Interventions to Reduce and Eliminate Health Disparities. American Journal of Public Health, 109(1) 72-78.
Purnell, T. S., Calhoun, E. A., Golden, S. H., Halladay, J. R., Krok, J. L., Appelhans, B. M., Cooper, L. A.(2016).Achieving Health Equity: Closing The Gaps In Health Care Disparities, Interventions, And Research. Health Affairs, 35(8), 1410-1415.
Thornton, R. L., Glover, C. M., Cene, C.W., Glik, D. C., Henderson, J. A., Williams, D. R.(2016).Evaluating Strategies For Reducing Health Disparities By Addressing The Social Determinants Of Health. Health Affairs (Project Hope), 35(8), 1416-1423.