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The Disparities in Healthcare in People with Disabilities

One of the biggest health concerns today includes people with disabilities and their unmet needs of health care. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are over a billion people who are defined as disabled. Yet a recent survey of people with mental health disorders showed that 35-50% in developed countries and 76-85% in developing countries received no treatment in the year before the study. This means that several hundreds of millions of people with disabilities are not being treated in a timely manner leading to worsening conditions. The barriers to accessing health care include cost, limited health services geared towards the disabled, physical barriers, and lack of knowledge and skills from providers among other things like stigmatized views towards the disabled. Among the barriers to health care for people with disabilities include the discrimination and disparity of health care provided. In a qualitative study done in England pertaining to people with intell
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Cultural Competency: Case Study of Kaiser Permanente in CA

            Culture can be understood as an integrated pattern of learned beliefs and behaviors that is shared among groups. As providers, it is important to understand that although culture is shaped by influences such as race, ethnicity, language, and gender, it also extends to socioeconomic status, physical and mental ability, sexual orientation, and other factors. The culmination of these influences is what defines culture and forms a person’s belief system and motivates their behaviors. As the US becomes a more culturally diverse nation, healthcare systems and their providers must develop cultural competency in order to appropriately respond to a patient’s perspectives and values about their health. Failure to understand sociocultural differences can lead to misunderstandings and mismanagement of a patient, resulting in significant health consequences especially for minority groups.             As we discussed in class, in the early 1990s, studies showed
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The New Age of Hypercholesterolaemia Treatment

In 2003, a scientist in Montreal named Nabil Seidah discovered a novel human proprotein convertase protein that was located on the short arm of chromosome 1. At this same time, a lab in Paris had been researching families with the condition familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH). FH causes CAD in 90% of patients and in 60% of patients will lead to an early death based on the FRAMINGHAM study. The group in Paris identified a mutation in some FH patients that lied on chromosome 1 but were not able to ID the gene. Both labs ended up getting together and published their work in 2003 that linked mutations in the gene, now known as PCSK9 to FH. Additionally, a study in 2004 was released showing that statin therapy induced mRNA expression and could significantly increase PCSK9 levels in a dose-dependent manner These publications led to a flood of research on the PCSK9 gene. In 2009 a group at UT-Southwestern used this new information about the PCSK9 gene and sequenced the relevant region on
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Why Marijuana Should be Rescheduled

Today, the use of medical marijuana remains one of the most controversial issues. Opinions on this topic are vastly polarized with strong arguments defending benefits and risks. However, there is relatively little scientific data on medical marijuana to confirm either argument. With this topic being so widely discussed, one may wonder why sufficient research studies have not taken place to base medical decisions. In order to understand the current status of medical marijuana, one must first understand the politics behind its use. The first anti-marijuana legislation took place in the Midwest and the Southwest in the 1910s and 1920s, specifically targeting Mexican migrants, Mexican Americans, Blacks, and jazz musicians. Not surprisingly, Latino and black communities today continue to face a widely disproportionate drug enforcement and sentencing involved in marijuana possession.  The first round of federal cannabis prohibition was officially under the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, despit
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The truth about vaccines

The truth about vaccines “The government is trying to kill [people].” One woman claims as her reason for not vaccinating her child. “Vaccines cause autism,” another claims as if that is good enough reason not to protect her child. We hear about these stories so often these days that it is no longer surprising, but it should be. Shouldn’t it?   Currently, there is an outbreak of measles in New York, which is causing serious concern. A public health emergency was declared, and there is a possibility that people are hosting “measles party” in order to intentionally expose unvaccinated children to the disease. Measles is a highly contagious disease that can cause fever, cough, runny nose, and rash; it can also cause complications, such as pneumonia and encephalitis. Children could die from this disease. Edward Jenner (1749-1823) contributed greatly to foundation of immunology by suggesting that infection from cowpox protected against smallpox (Yes-he was not the first one, bu
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Stigma Surrounding Mental Health

           Mental health has always been stigmatized and never been socially accepted like other diseases are in society. Throughout history, many mental health problems were explained by religious superstitions such as being possessed by a devil or demon and other bizarre things that people believed in. Many a time, people were killed for these reasons, which we are now finding were mental health disorders that people did not know about at the time. One outstanding example of that in history were the many cases of patients within mental institutions that had schizophrenia or dementia and were treated extremely poorly. They were not treated like patients in a hospital, but were often tied up, locked in rooms similar to jail cells, and in extreme cases underwent surgical procedures like lobotomies in which the anterior part of the frontal lobes were severed from the brain and sometimes removed completely. This left the patient without any personality, intellect, and emotionally blunted
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Ethics of Rising Drug Costs

Rising insulin prices have recently gained national attention – insulin is needed by patients to survive, yet its prices have rapidly risen beyond unaffordable for many. These high prices comprise patients’ well-being, and have resulted in deaths when patients try to stretch their insulin supply.             While insulin may be in the spotlight for now, it is far from being the only drug to have seen drastic price increases.   The dilemma of prescription prices has become an ethical issue that needs to be addressed on a national scale.   Many drug companies claim these high prices are necessary due to the costs of research and development. Nirmal Mulye, CEO of Nostrum Laboratories increased the price of nitrofurantoin to over $2,000 bottle, Nitrofurantoin, however, has been on the market for decades and Mulye doesn’t contribute the rise in price to R&D expenses. Mulye claims he was able to increase the price because Nostrum is one of two companies that sells a
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