Community Engaged Work

Critical Connection 1

GWS 272

As a medical student, I have devoted an immense amount of interest in medicine and it's practice. The compassion for helping those in need led me to volunteer at the core center. The undertaking of the CORE Center is to administer transcendent quality care for individuals and families affected by infectious diseases. The core center does so with consideration, respect, and compassion, without regard to the ability to pay. When you walk into the CORE Center, it is immediately inviting and welcoming. Clients as well as providers actively participated in its design. This center focuses on helping those that are low income and in need. Here minorities receive health attention and medication free of charge. They also provide resources for child care and adult aide. The core center targets helping minorities because of the lack of health care resources minorities have. Facilities like the core center are very rare.

Dara H. Sorkin discusses this in the article "Racial/Ethnic Discrimination in Health Care: Impact of Perceived Quality of Care" stating that "Racial/ethnic minorities are more likely to report receipt of lower quality of health care." She describes how racial and ethnic minorities in the United States are affected by poor quality of health care. Racial/ethnic differences in access to care, receiving the medical care needed, and even receiving life-saving technologies (Sorkin 5). Even medicine and proper health care attention varies. This divides society and sets a disadvantage for the minorities.

Prejudices by society is even applicable. In the article "Institutional Racism in US Health Care" by Vernellia Randall we see how minorities are mistreated because of lack of access to health care. "More than 38.4 million Americans are uninsured with no economic access to health care."(Randall 61) A disproportionate number of the uninsured are minorities. Structural inequalities are apparent and minorities have a...