Sunday, November 6, 2011

Latino Health Care

In both the articles by Wallace and Lara the authors explore various factors of health care for Latino's in the U.S. Each article examines how health care policies and procedures are dependent upon the relationships between different social institutions. Structural functionalism concentrates on the positive and negative associations between social structures. This theory is highly relevant to understanding health care for Latino's in the United States.

The article by Wallace examines health care assistance for elderly Latino's. Often paid assistance is merited based on need, demographics, economics and family availability. When examining who receives paid assistance the author concludes those who have higher need, higher education, higher income, and less availability from family were generally those who received public assistance. This pattern disadvantages elderly Latino's because Latino's often display signs of having low education, low income and they often live with their children or family of some sort. The fact that Latino's have a strong family base works against them in regards of paid assistance. Paid assistance for health care is a great example of structural functionalism because the methods used display the importance between social institutions.

The article by Lara examines Latino health in association with the process of acculturation. Acculturation requires immigrants to fit in with the core society. Latino's have unfortunately been slow to acculturate due to their lack in perceived human capital. Acculturation has been linked to having both positive and negative effects on Latino's health. It has had positive effects because Latino's often use health care facilities and use preventative methods more often. It has negative effects linked to increased drug abuse, alcohol abuse, smoking, poor diet patterns and low birth outcomes. This article examines how different socioeconomic factors such as education level, resource availability, language proficiency and knowledge of the culture all contribute to health care and treatment for Latino's. Each of these factors relates to one another and it is important to expand awareness and research explaining differences in health care assistance for Latino's. Although each of these articles carefully examines Latino's they neglect to depict differences among Latino subgroups such as Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, etc...

1 comment:

  1. Good point about the diversity within the latino community. Do you suspect there would be differences within these subgroups?

    ReplyDelete