ANSWER
Part A: Contrasts Between Acculturation, Assimilation, and Biculturalism
When immigrants or are exposed to a dominant culture, acculturation, assimilation, and biculturalism help to define how people engage with a new culture. Although they are related, every idea has various consequences for health and shows varying degrees of cultural integration.
Inculturation
Adopting particular features of a new culture while still keeping characteristics of one’s own is known as acculturation. Affecting behaviour, values, language, and social conventions, this dynamic and multifaceted process shapes Although total cultural absorption is not always necessary for acculturation, individual degree of adaption differs.
Connotations for Health: Acculturation has positive and bad effects on health as well:
Improved health outcomes can result from exposure to preventive care practices, improved healthcare access, and incorporation into the new society’s healthcare system.
Stress resulting from cultural conflict, loss of traditional support structures, and adoption of poor lifestyle choices (e.g., fast food intake or sedentary behaviour common in the host culture) might negatively effect health (Ritter & Graham, 2023).
Acceptance
Often to the degree of renouncing their native cultural identity, assimilation is the process by which people totally merge into the dominant culture. People absorb the language, customs, and behaviours of the host culture totally, in a one-directional process.
Health consequences: Assimilation can take several forms.
Full integration into the healthcare system can help to lower cultural barriers and enhance service availability.
Negative effects of a loss of cultural identity could include psychological stress, social isolation, and a reduction in health-supporting traditional activities (such as traditional foods).
Being bicultural:
Being bicultural is the capacity to properly negotiate and combine elements of the original and host cultures. Bicultural people keep their cultural identity while embracing useful aspects of the new culture.
Health ramifications: Since people gain from the strengths of both cultures, biculturalism is sometimes linked with improved health results. For example, people could preserve strong family or community ties while using contemporary healthcare facilities.
Does health suffer depending on degree of acculturation?
Indeed, the degree of acculturation determines the results on health. Health benefits usually follow from moderate acculturation—that is, from people adjusting to useful practices of the host culture while keeping supportive features of their own country. On the other hand, severe acculturation or total assimilation could result in negative health effects from stress, identity loss, or poor behaviour modification.
Part B: Aligning with Healthy People 2023 Strategies to Minish or Eliminate Health Disparities
Promoting health equity and tackling health inequalities is the main emphasis of the Healthy People 2023 endeavour. Healthcare professionals can use these five techniques to lower inequalities while tending to a varied patient load:
1. Competent Culture-Based Treatment
Giving patients care that honours their cultural ideas, values, and customs helps to build trust and increases the results of their health.
Healthcare professionals should receive cultural competency training to help them better communicate and comprehend cultural health practices (Ritter & Graham, 2023).
2. Improving Health Literacy
Effective care is much hampered by low health literacy, particularly in underprivileged or immigrant groups.
Use clear language, translators, and culturally relevant teaching resources to make sure patients grasp their diagnosis, course of treatment, and choices for preventative care.
3. Dealing with SDOH, Social Determinants of Health
Directly influencing health outcomes are social factors including income, housing, education, and food availability.
Screen patients for SDOH-related issues and link them to local resources including food banks, housing aid, or transit options.
4. Improving Preventive Care Availability
Preventive programmes help to lower the load of chronic diseases and enhance long-term results.
Advocate for mobile clinics, outreach campaigns, and reasonably priced tests in underprivileged communities to boost access.
Five: Encouragement of Community Involvement
Including local communities into health projects guarantees that the interventions are pertinent and successful for the intended target group.
Design and carry out health initiatives catered to the need of particular groups by working with organisations and community leaders.
Useful Reaching
Establishing a diabetes treatment programme for a Hispanic community is one instance of using these tactics. Healthcare practitioners can raise health literacy and access to care by offering bilingual education sessions, including traditional dietary practices into nutrition counselling, and working with nearby food banks to present good food options. By means of mobile clinics, addressing transportation challenges guarantees patients may attend frequent check-ups, therefore ensuring better glucose control and general health results.
In summary
Knowing the ideas of acculturation, assimilation, and biculturalism helps one to have important understanding of how cultural integration affects health. Healthcare practitioners can lower health inequalities, solve socioeconomic determinants of health, and raise outcomes for various patient populations by applying focused techniques matched with Healthy People 2023. Combining improved health knowledge, culturally competent treatment, and preventative actions guarantees fair distribution of healthcare resources.
Referencing
Ritter, L. A.; Graham, D. H. (2023). Third Edition: Multicultural Health Cognella. Healthy People 2023. (2023). Social factors of health and equity of health. gotten from https://www.healthypeople.gov.
QUESTION
Part A: Explain the differences between the concepts of acculturation, assimilation, and being bicultural. Does the level of acculturation have a positive or negative effect on health? Explain.
Part B: Based on Health People 2023 objectives, describe at least five strategies you can implement while caring for your patient population that may help reduce or eliminate health disparities.
Submission Instructions:
Your initial post should be at least 500 words, formatted, and cited in current APA style with support from at least 2 academic sources.
Read
Read and watch the lecture resources & materials below early in the week to help you respond to the discussion questions and to complete your assignment(s).
(Note: The citations below are provided for your research convenience. You should always cross-reference the current APA guide for correct styling of citations and references in your academic work.)
Read
- Ritter, L.A., & Graham, D.H. (2023). Multicultural Health (3rd ed.). San Diego, CA: Cognella.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-7935-8830-2.
Print ISBN: 978-1-7935-7037-6