Chapter Two: Health Disparities and Health Equity
Overview
This chapter introduces the concepts of health inequities, health disparity, and health equity. Inequities are differences in treatment that are unfair or unjust. When applied to health care, the term inequity can mean unfair treatment from health providers or unequal access to care or quality health care. Disparities are the differences in outcomes between groups of people. When the term is applied to health, disparity means that there are differences in the state of health between populations that are rooted in unequal treatment or social conditions.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the difference between health disparities and health equity
- Discuss health care inequity
- Recognize how history shapes current health care quality and health outcomes
- Identify the impact that health disparities have on individuals and communities
- Discuss the nurse’s role in promoting health equity
- Compare and contrast health outcomes between historically excluded aggregates and those with historical social advantage
Key Terms
- health equity
- health disparity
- immigrant
- asylum seeker
- refugee
- ableism
- LGBTQIA+
Introduction
Health disparities and health equity have a profound influence on health and quality of health care received by individuals. Health equity is a fair and just treatment that promotes the prevention or correction of health disparities. Health equity can be achieved through individual actions in providing unbiased, culturally sensitive care and through ensuring equitable access to health care. There are historical, social, economic, and structural (or systemwide) barriers to providing equitable care. These systemic barriers can be remedied through actions that promote health justice.
Health Equity, Inequities, and Disparities
Health equity is achieved when every person has the opportunity to “attain [their] full health potential, [and no one is] disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of social position or other socially determined circumstances” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2022b). Health care inequities are the differences in the distribution of health care resources between population groups, arising from the sociopolitical, economic, and structural conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age. The term health care inequality is often used interchangeably with health care inequities; however, as indicated in Figure 2.1, the two terms are vastly different. Equality means everyone is given the same resources, whereas equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and needs different resources to reach the same outcome.
Long Description for Figure 2.1
On the left side, equality is represented. Three figures of different heights standing on identical wooden boxes beside a fence. While the taller figures can see over the fence, the shortest figure cannot see over the fence. On the right side, equity is represen