Health Disparity In Health Care

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As the United States turns towards a universal health care system we still have many who don’t have access to healthcare for various reasons. A few main reasons include the high cost of healthcare, racial category, gender or geographic location. Vaccines are essential to a person’s everyday life and well-being. Whether you call them immunizations, vaccinations, or shots they are essential to eliminating diseases. Contracting a disease such as polio, or diphtheria are extremely low because most people are vaccinated against such diseases. Vaccines are one of medicines greatest advances and has increased our overall life expectancy. Children are vaccinated out of the womb which can prevent sixteen disease that a person can contract. Vaccinations …show more content…
“Some groups of people have higher rates of certain diseases, and more deaths and suffering from them compared to others. These groups may be based on race, ethnicity, immigrant status, disability, sex or gender, geography, or income (“Health Disparities,” 2013). Another way to define a health disparity is “A statistically significant difference in health indicators that persists over time (Holtz, 2013, p. 10).” Any health disparity can affect anyone, and anywhere. When we look at statistics we often find that those who are most affected are those in third world countries, people of color, and those of lower economic …show more content…
While 94.2% of children are up to date on kindergarten immunizations the small percentage of those not immunized makes this a health disparity. It only takes one child to get sick to affect the other 6%. That 6% of kindergarten children represent more than 4,000 students. For example that would be the whole town of Two Harbors being effected by an illness that is preventable from being vaccinated. Two school districts that stuck out as having very low kindergarten vaccinations were independent school districts (ISD) 294, and 2164. These schools have less than 65% of their students immunized compared to almost every other school (“Immunizations,” 2016). ISD 294 is out of Houston, Minnesota, and ISD 2164 is Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton which are located in more remote parts of Minnesota. Houston, Minnesota is located in the far southeast corner of the state. Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton is located in northern Minnesota on the border of North Dakota between Fargo, and Grand