Health Disparities: Racism
Weathering Concept
Weathering provides a clear definition for terms like structural violence and social determinants of health. In terms of weathering, Warren-Findlow (222) claims that black women face cumulative stress and health disparities that have a negative impact on their health outcomes, thus hastened aging. Furthermore, according to Warren-Findlow (222), weathering includes not only individual poverty or lifestyle but also institutional inequalities and discrimination based on gender and age. Structural violence refers to the standardized ways in which social structures harm individuals. Furthermore, structural violence explains differences in health or any other social structure that the community finds unfair and unacceptable. The weathering framework acknowledges that black women’s reactions to their situation can exacerbate their health. The social and economic conditions that influence an individual’s health are referred to as “social determinants of health. Personal health practices, income, wealth, physical environment, and culture are examples of these conditions. As a result, Warren and Findlow’s article on weathering explains how socioeconomic status affects health. (Warren-Findlow 223) says that chronic diseases and death rates are higher among poor black women.
Defining Warren-Research Findlow’s
A theory is an explanation for how or why something happens. Furthermore, it provides speculative solutions to problems. In terms of theory, Warren-Study Findlow’s employs a weathering framework to explain the relationship between social and environmental stress and heart disease in African American females. As a result, the study proposes that black women suffer from heart disease as a result of stress. Women develop stress because they may have lost their parents at an early age, are raising their children alone, and have an early onset of disability or severe illness (Warren-Findlow 243). Epistemology is the study of knowledge and rational belief. According to the study’s author, the early onset of chronic illness in black women is caused by social and economic stressors. The author uses the stories of older black women to look at the connection between stress and heart disease.
Warren-Study Findlow’s used an in-depth qualitative interview to gather information from older black women about their lifelong and recent stressors that may have contributed to heart disease. Furthermore, the interview included demographic questions about black women. The author adds to what we know by showing how important it is to understand how complicated people’s lives are in order to fix the health problems that minority groups face.
Positivist and interpretivist methodologies
I believe Findlow’s, I believe, avoids this pitfall. The primary goal of Warren-research Findlow’s was to demonstrate explanatory models of women’s heart disease. The analysis revealed that women believed stress was the primary cause of their heart disease, according to Warren-Findlow (226). Because quantitative research methods and official statistical figures are reliable, positivist research tends to use them to uncover objective reality. According to the findings, more than 80% of Chicago women live in dangerous neighborhoods (Warren-Findlow 235). The author, as a positivist, explains the relationship between variables. For example, stress is linked to heart disease in black women. Orsi, Margellos-Anast, and Whitman (353) say that racism and socioeconomic factors play a role in health disparities.
The author used in-depth interviews with interpretivism because different people experience and understand objective reality in different ways. Warren-Findlow was interested in learning about the lives of elderly black women. Warren-Findlow (235) says that it was inspiring to see how black women kept going even when things were hard.
Medicalization
I agree with Warren-Findlow regarding the issue of women being overmedicated. Black women are on more psychiatric medications than previously recorded. Moreover, black women tend to stay on medication far longer than expected. According to Ertel et al. (844), racial discrimination increases the risk of depressive symptoms. Therefore, black women prefer to use antidepressants to restrain their emotional lives.
There is a medicalization process in the US society. The availability of insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and biotechnical industries promotes medicalization. Moreover, patients as consumers perceive nonmedical problems such as aging, alcoholism, racism, and birth as medical conditions. The minority group in the US has more health problems compared to whites (Hunt, Whitman & Hurlbert 119). (Hunt, Whitman & Hurlbert 119). I believe that we are medicalizing social problems. Social problems that US citizens face include drug abuse, crime, obesity, and abortion. People think that medicalization is a change for the better because it is more kind than management by religious leaders.
Understanding the Complexity of People’s Lives
Researchers will understand the complexity of people’s lives by conducting well-designed ethnographic studies. For rigorous ethnographic studies, researchers should be well trained since they are the research instruments. Moreover, ethnography allows researchers to build rapport with participants, thus enabling them to obtain rich and meaningful data. Warren-Findlow (227) stated that respondents volunteered and provided comments and explanations on their challenges. Researchers must develop health literacy in order to obtain, process, and understand basic health and service information and make appropriate decisions in order to understand health disparities. Researchers must employ a social and ecological model. This model will help researchers understand the factors that influence people’s behaviors. They can use the model to develop successful programs because it will facilitate the adoption of healthy behaviors. Orsi, Margellos-Anast, and Whitman (p. 353) say that a city-wide disparity conference helped bring the issue to the attention of the public and the media, which led to the end of disparities.
Classifications of Races
Racial classifications are, in my opinion, social constructs. I believe that a race’s characteristics and classifications are dynamic. Racial classification is arbitrary. It is critical to understand how a person identifies himself.Similarly, racial classification is imposed from without. Sometimes a person’s racial identity contradicts what the outside world assigns to him or her. For example, one may be classified as black in the United States but colored in Zimbabwe.
Researchers interested in understanding health disparities should avoid using racial classification because it encourages racialization. When researchers examine race in relation to biology, they can shift their focus away from the social causes of disease and toward improving the status quo. Researchers will also work to strengthen social norms regarding racial inferiority. According to the findings of Hunt, Whitman, and Hurlbert (121), black women with breast cancer face disparities in many cities in the United States when compared to white females.
Racism and health
Health researchers, in my opinion, should shed light on racism and health. Researchers would benefit from investigating how racism affects health. The research will look into how racism causes and maintains health disparities. Racial segregation is the primary cause of health disparities. Racism contributes to racial disparities in health, according to a study on health by Orsi, Margellos-Anast, and Whitman (353). Racial discrimination varies according to racial classification. On the same note, individual racial discrimination contributes to stress, which has an impact on a person’s health. In contrast to Wilkinson’s view, Coburn argued that modern capitalism is the cause of income inequality. Individuals, according to Coburn, should not only focus on the effects of income inequality but also on its causes. So, researchers should broaden their focus and try to figure out what makes people racist in the first place.
