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Fear and Healthcare Disparities

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Submitted By zmoriba
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According to the assigned article, "Health Disparities and Structural Violence: How Fear Undermines Health Among Immigrants at Risk for Diabetes. In and effort to Explain the relationship between fear and health identified by the researchers in the article I will start with this issue of cost pointed out in the article.

People are afraid to seek health care because they cannot afford the copays, or the medical bills to follow. According to the article, the people in the international district are left with choices to make such as pay for healthcare now or be left in the cold, dark, no food or water and possibly get thrown out in the streets along with their families, possibly young children in the mix, these children's needs takes precedence of healthcare for the adults. The people consider the fact that diabetic complications are not imminent. Eventually, they make a choice to suffer in silence until their health gets out of control, to the point where they cannot tolerate it anymore. At this point, there is not much that can be done for them because the prompt diagnosis has not been made prior to the complexity that they present with to the doctor. There are also the issues of them being unable to discern the bills and not sure how to go about getting the bills settled. Keeping in mind that they are undocumented, they are fearful of deportation, they are stressed out and we all know that stress plays a major role in the exacerbation of any diagnosis especially diabetes. (Page-Reeves et al., 2013) Secondly, are the issues of fear and language barrier, immigration status and discrimination. These people feel like they are being discriminated against, because of their dialect and they are view as a liability. Sometimes interpreter services are provided, but because the interpreters are underpaid, they show no interest in their work, and their attention span

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