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Rural Health Disparities: Aging Outside Societal Confines
Rural Health Disparities: Aging Outside Societal Confines
As a term project for SOC-R381 (Social Factors in Health and Illness), I completed a research paper on rural America and the obstacles this region faces when it comes to their health. Generally, rural America struggles with both
higher poverty rates and access to adequate healthcare
a unique social environment that can negatively influence the community's outcome.
While not always considered as such, rural areas of the United States are generally disinvested in by governing bodies, and fly under the radar when discussing health inequities.
Thesis
Thesis
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the disparities seen in rural communities are affected and further exacerbated by social factors such as poverty and socioeconomic status seen in these areas, lack of social infrastructure and policy support, and the stigma directed at these communities, seen from both outsiders and individuals within these areas.
soc r381 research paper for eportt.pdfGenesis
Genesis
As this course was a medial sociology survey course, there were many avenues I was interested in further researching. I flipped back and forth between different topics that interested me (healthy immigrant effect, health for LGBTQ individuals), I ended on wanted to learn more about why rural communities struggled with their health, among other aspects of their life.
This came from attending a webinar for another class, MHHS-M301 (Perspectives on Health, Disease, and Healing), that focused on rural health disparities and what the future would be to assist this community. I also just find rural America, especially Appalachia, beautiful and wanted to explore what can be done for these communities.
Photo taken during a camping trip in North Carolina, by myself
Future Recommendations
Future Recommendations
Something I enjoyed exploring in this paper can be seen in the last section title Future Recommendations. While it gets a bit political, I wanted to explore what can be done outside the hands of the community. Individual health behavior change can only go so far, and the environment people live in has massive amounts of affect on their health. Taking (part of) the responsibility out of the populations hands and looking upstream has many more benefits for struggling communities, especially when discussing topics such as health, income, and racial equity.
Excerpt from this section...
Excerpt from this section...
When it comes to policies or stances on healthcare reform, Democrat politicians tend to have a more hands-on approach; in 2008, generally only the Democrat candidates were running on wanting to force employers to offer health insurance, pushing for individual mandates, and are willing to sacrifice other aspects to budget for healthcare (Zwillich, 2008; Falkenbach et al., 2020). Having Democrat politicians in an area decreases health inequalities; a Democratic governor meant that the probability of Medicaid expansion was increased by roughly twenty percent, and a Democratic legislature raised that percentage by fifty percent (Falkenbach et al., 2020). Democrats are also more likely to budget more towards health, and states with more Democrats in power are more likely to adopt bills and policies focusing on a communities’ health (Falkenbach et al., 2020).
To read more, please view the section title Future Recommendations in my paper!
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