Healthcare Access: Harvard School of Public Health

Health Care Access
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Abstract
The access to a reliable healthcare facility can be considered as one of the fundamental human rights. Unfortunately, the American lower and average income classes have been observed to suffer from the lack of or inadequate access to the healthcare systems or services. This report is written to highlight the efforts made by AHRQ to encourage the research aimed at improving the health care access of the affected communities. The research selected here is carried out Harvard School of Public Health and uses state of the art methods to address the topic.
Health Care Access
1 Introduction
The recent years have seen a spike in terms of economic inequalities among the United States’ population. Moreover, almost every chronic health condition ultimately results in the decline of income and increase the severance of the diseases. Owing to the increased income gap the life expectancies of poor and rich has been increasing the country since the 1970’s (Kronenfeld & Kronenfeld, 2004). In the 70’s this difference was at 1% and today according to a study in the year 2017 it's standing at an alarming rate of 10.1% (men) (Klosko, 2017). The situation is more serious for the male population where the same value is standing at 14.1% (Klosko, 2017). The health of poor communities is often ignored by health professionals and society as a whole. For instance, in Flint, the health care professionals continuously ignored the exposure of African American community to toxic materials in the drinking water of the city (Kronenfeld & Kronenfeld, 2004). The following figures show a dramatic increase in the income of the top 10% of the income earning classes in the United States.
Figure 1: The rise of income in the top 10 earning categories (Klosko, 2017).
1 Health Care Access and Income Status (Problem Statement)
Income-related issues and widening in the gap of access to health care has been worse in the United States when compared to other developed countries. According to the survey 39% of the Americans are unable to seek medical assistance owing to the expenses compared to 2% of Canadians and 1% in the UK (Klosko, 2017). The situation is more serious and alarming in the Southern States. For instance, low-income individuals in Texas are less likely to visit any healthcare institute compared to an individual in the Northern States. These high differences are generally attributed to high rates of un-insurance or inappropriate health insurances. Therefore, it is of extreme importance for both medical and industrial research institutes to address the difference between health care access in the American communities to ensure a better and peaceful future of the present and coming generations.
2.1 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
The AHRQ was developed to encourage researches in the American Medical and Research Institutes aiming at providing state of the art medical services to the American population. The difference in the income status and worsening of the health status of the lower income communities has been acknowledged by the institute and is currently encouraging researches on the topic. One of such researches is the implementation of Medicaid Insurance for the lower-income American people. The Grant of $151,839 identified as K02HS21291-09 has been given to Harvard School for Public Health to devise a reliable insurance plan to cover the lower-income class of the Americans (Bavier, 2018). The research was completed on 31st August 2018 and following trends were studied.
2.2 Medicaid Insurance
This program was exclusively developed for the American having lower incomes and currently covers about 58 lower-income Americans. The inclusion of the program in the health system has been able to provide improved health care and access situation for most of its beneficiaries. It is also an admitted fact that the earning of Medicaid care has reduced the rates of ‘clinical depression’ in the lower-income communities (Klosko, 2017). Moreover, the beneficiaries are observed to be more focused on their health status when they don’t have to worry about the illnesses emerging due to their economic situations. The program is supported by the State Governments throughout the country and proved to be key-determinant in improving the state of health-care access in the American communities.
The research taking place at the Harvard School for Public Health is focused on expanding the coverage of the Medicaid insurance program to the American Communities which are living under the poverty line ($16643/year) (Klosko, 2017). The succes...