By Ryan Otteson | Reporter
April is Minority Health Month, which aims to raise awareness about the importance of minority health and health disparities among racial and ethnic groups. There are many factors that can contribute to health inequities among minorities, and those factors have to do with the social determinants of health.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, these determinants include economic stability, access to education, access and quality of healthcare, neighborhood and built environment and social and community context.
Dallas senior KC Carmichael is a child and family studies major on the pre-med track. Being involved in the Filipino Student Association at Baylor, she recognizes the importance of minority health and how health disparities were especially prevalent during the COVID-19 era.
“We could really see the faults in the healthcare system, in either urban or rural areas where these kinds of minority groups didn’t get as much healthcare as they should have been,” Carmichael said.
She said that although it might be small, writing letters to policy makers can help be a starting point for changes in healthcare to reduce health inequities. Carmichael also suggested holding workshops for people who do not speak English as their first language because a lot of times they are not aware of what services are available to them, or they do not have culturally tailored medical care.
“I’m able to have access to healthcare, but I know a lot of my family in the Philippines don’t,” she said. “They’re in the provinces, these smaller areas, where they don’t have that high quality of care.”
Dallas junior Aatiqah Hussain is a public health major who is also on the pre-med track. She is also aware of health disparities among minority groups, citing dermatology as an example. There are genetic and cultural differences with each patient, and while healthcare professionals should treat all patients with respect, not everyone needs the same care. For example, different procedures sometimes need to be used on people with darker skin tones.
“They’re treated differently, sometimes negatively, but also they aren’t treated differently enough in terms of the same products and machines and stuff are used on different skinned people, even though it’s not safe for everyone because some products are better for lighter skin,” Hussain said.
Hussain said that Baylor has done a good job teaching pre-health students about health disparities and the social determinants of health.
“We have to be servants of the community, not just people who have jobs who get to pick and choose who they help,” she said.
