Liberty University

HSCI 715 Personal Reflection on the Population

Cultural Competency in Health Sciences

Jonathan Giles

20th January 2023 

Topic: Significance of Cultural Competence to Access of Care among African Americans in the

US

Population: African Americans

Personal Reflection on the Population

The reason I have chosen African Americans in this project revolves around a personal belief that equality should not be compromised in any society. While the African Americans are not the only minority groups in the US, I have read several articles narrating the historical injustices the African Americans have suffered especially with respect to access to care. Dickman et al. (2022) provide a comparative exploration of trends in use of healthcare between the people of the color and the white people in the US. The historical assessment indicates that prior to the establishment of the revolutionary civil rights legal provisions particularly Medicaid and Medicare, the levels of inequalities between the black and the white people were sharp and alarming. This led to the outlawing of de jure discrimination in the healthcare sector.

Despite the eminence of the efforts made to bridge the gap in access of care between these two groups of people in the US, modern trends still indicate that African Americans still register higher rates of chronic diseases prevalence than the white people (Hill, 2016). Their life expectancy is similarly lower than that of their counterparts. These statistics pose a critical question on what could be the reason and what role would cultural competence play in alienating the problem. I believe the findings would be of essence in the healthcare sector. It would also shed light on what a professional in the healthcare sector can do to be an agent of change. As a champion of change, I feel that pursuing this topic would be quite instrumental in my educational and professional growth.

References

Dickman, S. L., Gaffney, A., McGregor, A., Himmelstein, D. U., McCormick, D., Bor, D. H., &

Woolhandler, S. (2022). Trends in health care use among black and white persons in the US, 1963-2019. JAMA Network Open, 5(6), e2217383. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.17383

Hill, S. A. (2016). Race, racism, and health outcomes. Inequality and African-American

Health, 4(3), 117-168. https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781447322818.003.0002