Part 1: Cross-sectional research shows that, on average, people with disabilities secondary to illness or injury have lower socioeconomic status than people without disabilities. In a population health model, how could lower socioeconomic status increase the risk of disability secondary to illness or injury? How would cross-sectoral collaborative approaches benefit this population?
My Response: Reduced socioeconomic status (SES) has been consistently associated with worse health and reduced quality of life. SES is a broad term that includes the money and subjective views of social position, class, and educational attainment. Socioeconomic status can refer to the quality of life and the opportunities and privileges available to individuals. Additionally, socioeconomic status is a constant and reliable predictor of various life outcomes, including physical and psychological health (Macdonald et al., 2018). Thus, lower SES significantly increases the risk of disability secondary to illness or injury.
Individuals with lower socioeconomic status are more likely to experience disability secondary to illness because they lack access to quality healthcare. For instance, the American Psychology Association [APA] (n.d.) indicates that lower SES levels have constantly been associated with poor health outcomes since it limits access to quality healthcare. Besides, lower SES prevents people from having enough equipment to aid their illness recovery at home, which increases their risk of disability secondary to illness.
Poverty also appears to impact people with lower SES. The situation is exceedingly terrible for those with disabilities, with almost one in five (21.5 percent) living in poverty, compared to a little more than one in ten without impairments (12.5 percent) (Erickson et al., 2018). The situation is worse when considering the job market (ages 21–64), where 28.1 percent of disabled people live in poverty, compared to 12.2 percent of working-age people without disabilities (Erickson et al., 2018). Hence, SES leads to poor health outcomes.
Nonetheless, cross-sectoral collaborative approaches would benefit individuals with lower SES considerably. For instance, De Montigny et al. (2019) explain that cross-sector collaboration is increasingly being depended on to address society’s pressing and obstinate issues. Through cross-sectoral collaboration, individuals with low SES may be provided with health insurance covers to enable them to access quality healthcare. Besides, the government may increase employment opportunities for disabled individuals with low SES. Yan et al. (2018) add that multifaceted social issues require extensive collaboration to initiate transformative social change across various sectors. Therefore, cross-sectoral collaborative methods would improve the population’s SES and health outcomes.
References:
American Psychology Association. (n.d.). Disability & socioeconomic status. https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/disability
De Montigny, J. G., Desjardins, S., & Bouchard, L. (2019). The fundamentals of cross-sector collaboration for social change to promote population health. Global Health Promotion, 26(2), 41-50. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1757975917714036
Part 2: Respond to another student’s response in regards to Part 1. Respond in first person, like you were having a face to face conversation with them and it shouldn’t be a critique about their sentence structure but about the actual content of what they wrote and its relevance to Part 1.
Respond to Erik Pec below:
Lower socioeconomic status prohibits a lot of our country from receiving the healthcare they deserve and need. We should not allow our socio economic status to ever dictate the type of healthcare we receive. Many of the individuals that have a disability are already putting most of their income or their family’s income towards medical bills. People are blindsided by unexpected costs when it comes to injury or illnesses. Government funded programs like Medicaid only cover certain needs for individuals.
When it comes to cross-sectoral collaborative approaches these are great tools in order to identify the direct needs for communities. We have to get our local communities to come together in order to help watch other out, especially those who are in dire need of certain resources they cannot afford. Using the resources we have locally such as free clinics and any sort of health education does go along way.
