My Aging Minority Rural Grandparents: Disparities in the Health and Health Care of the Rural Elderly Minority Population and the Need for Culturally Competent Health Care Providers
19 Pages Posted: 20 Nov 2012
Date Written: September 1, 2012
Abstract
This is a story about my rural elderly grandparents and how the lack of culturally competent health care providers affects their health and health care. As I write this article, they are ages ninety-two and ninety-six, and they are aging in their rural Mississippi home. As rural elderly African Americans, they beat the odds in a country where African Americans are sicker and die younger than their Caucasian counterparts, and where the health of rural Americans lags behind the population in general. My grandparents embody the intersection of three of health care's most disadvantaged population characteristics: age, race, and geographic location.
As a result of their age, race, and geographic location, the quality of care they receive is inadequate and their overall health status suffers. Taken separately, each of the three population subsets -- the elderly population, the rural population, and the African American population -- is a disparity population. So it is no surprise that, when combined, the health of the rural elderly African American lags behind the health of the majority of the population.
Although there are a number of reasons for the inadequate health and health care of such individuals, in this Article I focus on the non-financial barrier of the limited availability of culturally competent health care providers. Most conversations about disparities focus on lack of insurance and other financial barriers to health care. For my grandparents, and other similarly-situated individuals, eliminating disparities means more than removing financial barriers such as access to health insurance.
Keywords: health care, disparities, health
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