Changing the Face of Health Care:

Students Must Challenge the Health Care System's Disparities

Image borrowed from www.ippnw-students.org/MedAct01.JPG

In a country boasting cutting-edge technologies, new treatments, and exciting research, it is unacceptable that 100,000's of racial and ethnic minorities lack the health care coverage necessary to access adequate health care. As future health professionals, we have the power - the ethical and economic responsibility - to challenge these disparities and establish a more just health care system.

Whether due to insufficient education, employment, or opportunity, too many Hispanic, African-American, and other ethnic groups report an inability to seek or access the health provision they and their families need. As future health professionals entering a field where one's race or ethnicity often directly or indirectly dictates the health coverage one receives, we must work together to better understand the inequalities that lead to these disparities. We must change the face of health care to better serve the patients who need us.

Image borrowed from www.temple.edu/medicine/images	Image borrowed from www.dartmouth.edu

Please explore this site to learn more about how disparities originate, what the researchers say, and what can be done to reduce disparities in health care. Read interviews with health care professionals sharing their unique insight, watch and read an ethics intern's personal testimony, and understand where we need to go in order to better and more justly serve patients.

For a comprehensive, linear exploration of disparities in health care, please read the linear essay.