TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PUBLIC HEALTH PROFESSOR'S NEW BOOK
EXAMINES HEALTH CARE CHALLENGES OF ETHNIC MINORITIES
Seeing a doctor for even the most routine injury or illness can be a stressful and confusing experience. All too often, the doctor rushes in, quickly gives you the once-over, asks a question or two and then sends you on your way with a prescription slip, on which he's illegibly scribbled the name of some medicine, and you never even found out just what was wrong with you.
Now imagine going through this experience as someone who can barely understand English, doesn't have any insurance, or has only seen a doctor a handful of times.
These are just some of the difficulties faced by many ethnic minorities when dealing with the health care system in America, according to Grace Xueqin Ma, Ph.D., a professor of public health education at Temple University.
Ma and George Henderson, Ph.D., Dean of Liberal Studies at the University of Oklahoma, recently published Rethinking Ethnicity and Health Care (Charles C. Thomas Publishing Ltd.), a book that examines the challenges faced by four groups of ethnic minorities, African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans, in receiving health care. The book also looks at the challenges facing health care professionals when caring for members of these groups and suggests some changes
that could be made to make health care more accessible for minorities.
Not surprisingly, the number one problem facing these groups is the low socio-economic status of many of its members, said Ma.
"While there have been great advances in medical technology, these groups haven't really benefitted that much," she said.
Because many of these groups' members are unemployed or have low-level jobs, they often don't have insurance, and health care is seen more as a luxury than a necessity, said Ma.
In addition to the language barrier, there are other less obvious problems, such as the use of alternative medicine, that face many Asian and Hispanic immigrants of every social and economic class.
Ma believes that many Asian immigrants would seek health care sooner during an illness if there was more integration of alternative and Western medicine.
"Many Asian immigrants will go to the supermarket when they first get sick and use herbal treatments, but then if they go to a doctor, they won't reveal that," Ma explained.
"If I'm a patient and I've used some type of alternative medicine before coming to see a doctor, I should be encouraged to let the doctor know about it so that I don't have to worry about any kind of negative interaction."
Bringing alternative medicine into the mainstream would also allow for more regulation of certain practices, such as acupuncture, and might lead to insurance coverage for some alternative treatments, she added.
"There's been more emphasis over the years on alternative medicine, but there are still many doctors who don't know very much about it, and as ethnic populations grow, there will be the need for even greater awareness by health-care professionals," said Ma.
The integration of alternative and western medicine is just one improvement in the health-care industry Ma and Henderson suggest in their book. Other recommendations the authors make include simplifying medical terminology to make it less intimidating for non-native speakers, increasing community level health care and health education programs, increased teaching of cultural issues among health care workers, and increasing ethnic diversity among health-care providers.
An inernationally recognizesd scholar, Ma has published numerous papers dealing with ethnic health-care issues and her next book, The Culture of Health: Asian Communities in the United States, is due to be published in November by Greenwood Publishing Group Inc. Before coming to Temple, she taught at the University of Oklahoma, and Xian University in China.
For more information contact Matt Gray at Temple University's News Bureau, 215-204-7476 or [email protected]
mg-198 *** October 6, 1999
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