Introduction
The paper explores the impact of SES on medical outcomes of patients in the United States. It will describe three types of SES and how each affects healthcare. Furthermore, the best ways of dealing with the challenges will be discussed. The three SES types that will be discussed in the paper are education, income, and the availability of social and individual support.
Education
Lack of education as a challenge in the United States has contributed a lot to medical outcomes. People with little or no knowledge will always fail to follow prescription as per their doctor's. For instance, in a case where a person is not educated and is to undergo surgery, they tend to raise many issues and others end up failing to undergo surgery by refusing to sign a consent or even running from the health care facility. On the other hand, people with good knowledge of education tend to be in a better position when it comes to medical cases. They understand the reason to why a procedure should be performed. They give the medical personnel easy time in carrying out their duties hence easy management in the medical institution (De Chesnay & Anderson, 2008).
For the United States to eliminate the lack of education as a challenge to health care, there is a need for educating people for them to have knowledge. Knowledge is power to almost everything we do in our daily life. Knowledge enables people to reason at almost same level. It does not have to be medical education; at least some knowledge will open people's mind. Some people are really in need of education, but income may be a hindrance. The state can also provide subsidize or free education to its population. Other non-governmental organizations can also chip in and support other people in the provision of education (Flores, 2005).
The state also can provide a scholarship to medical personnel to advance in education. A small number of learned medical personnel in an institution is also a challenge to medical outcomes. Some hospitals have many patients and fewer staffs. This is also a great challenge in that there are poor services. Patients will be served poorly. Hiring medical workers from outside can as be a challenge in that the institution will be spending a lot of its resources paying the hired staffs salaries instead of equipping the hospital and buying of medicines. It is indeed very necessary to have the united people educative and also educated medical personnel from nurses, doctors’ anesthetists among others (The Commonwealth Fund, 2016). An educated nation is a healthy nation. Infectious diseases like tuberculosis, influenza among others are the major disease in every state. When people are educated, they are at a better place since they know the preventive and protective ways to deal with these diseases. They are also in a better position in the management of the communicable diseases in case they occur.
Availability of social and individual support
Social support and personal support is an essential thing in our medical institution. This support is really important especially to those people of low-class families, and some extend the middle-class families. Social support aids in the provision of medicine to the facilities for the needy individuals. They also help in the provision of medical equipment to the institution. Support groups also help in providing education by sponsoring the medical staffs or building medical schools. They end up proving the most qualified individuals to run the medical institutions. Social supports and personal support also contribute to the positive medical outcome by providing funds for the building of health facilities, and medical training institutions. Through their support, medical establishments in the United States have shown so much improvement. The state should always be thankful to this aid groups since it has contributed a lot towards a good medical outcome in the United States (NIHCM Foundation, 2007).
SES influences the social and individual support that people get. The most affected are people of low SES in society. The social aspect of SES entails the access of public and social amenities at the national, state, and the local level. People of low SES are subjected to poor medical outcomes since the available resources to support their lives are strained. For instance, their status limits to accessing good amounts of income or money at all levels. The social and individual support available matter greatly to people’s health. The availability is not just regarding amount, but also regarding quality. This is because social and individual supports helps in the countering of adverse physical, economic, and emotional antecedents of bad health. Persons with lower SES face high community and social demands while having access to few resources, which include the access to Medicare, money, personal resources such as adapting techniques and interpersonal resources like social groups. Moreover, there is also a direct relationship between health status and social status. This is dictated by the health behaviors that people of low SES take to adapt to depression and isolation linked to their position. Diverse and harsh environments in which people of lower SES live, particularly during childhood, predisposes them to health-damaging psychological, biologic, and behavioral factors (Kilbourne et al., 2006).
The best way to remedy the issue of socio-economic status if for the government and other relevant stakeholders to come together and agree on the way forwards. People should be accorded a lot of effort and resources towards the eradication of the disparities among people of a lower SES.
Income
The medical outcome is directly affected by the level of revenue of patients. The main reason for this is the high cost of medical services and drug prices. In the U.S, a Kaiser Health Tracking poll found 76% of the citizens believe that the main priority of the President and Congress should be to lower the high cost of drugs and make it within the reach of everyone, especially those with chronic conditions. An example of a disease that is expensive to treat is cancer (Horner-Johnson, 2016). Most cancer patients undergo a financial strain to access vital therapies such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Low-income earners who are diagnosed with life-threatening diseases are at a risk of not accessing the required medical services due to their incomes. Low income may also make those who are supposed to be on controlled diets, e.g., expectant women, not be able to obtain the foods they have been instructed to eat by health practitioners.
Another way in which income affects the medical outcome is the lack of or poor health insurance coverage for people in the low-income bracket. Low income earning families are far less likely to have employment-related health insurance than their high-earning counterparts. Families with public health insurance undergo a lot of trouble to access a healthcare provider.
People with greater resources work, reside and operate in places that are most favorable regarding physical and social conditions. By doing so, they keep themselves away from hazardous environment and place that is polluted. Those earning low incomes, on the other hand, cannot live in the most populated areas where disease-causing agents thrive. This makes them more prone to communicable diseases, yet they face a lot of difficulty in accessing healthcare centers (Shobha Srinivasan, 2014).
References
De Chesnay, M., & Anderson, B. (2008). Caring for the vulnerable. Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/in-the-literature/2004/jul/child-health-disparities--framing-a-research-agenda
Flores, G. (2005). Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Early Childhood Health and Health Care. PEDIATRICS, 115(2), e183-e193. http://dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.2004-1474
Horner-Johnson W, e. (2016). Promoting a new research agenda: health disparities research at the intersection of disability, race, and ethnicity. - PubMed - NCBI. Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Retrieved 15 April 2016, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25215914
Kilbourne, A., Switzer, G., Hyman, K., Crowley-Matoka, M., & Fine, M. (2006). Advancing Health Disparities Research Within the Health Care System: A Conceptual Framework. Am J Public Health, 96(12), 2113-2121. http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2005.077628
NIHCM Foundation. (2007). REDUCING HEALTH DISPARITIES AMONG CHILDREN: STRATEGIES AND PROGRAMS FOR HEALTH PLANS. Washington, NIHCM Foundation.
Shobha Srinivasan, S. (2014). Transitioning from Health Disparities to a Health Equity Research Agenda: The Time Is Now. Public Health Reports, 129(Suppl 2), 71. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3863705/
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