Reasons for Infant Mortality Among African-Americans
Infant Death Among African-Americans
Infant mortality refers to the demise of the newborn before coming to see the first birthday. Accordingly, the newborn death rate is the number of infant losses for every 1000 living deliveries. On the other hand, the vulnerable population is those individuals that are at a disadvantage in the society such as diverse racial minorities (Hummer, Powers, Pullum, Gossman & Frisbie, 2012). Majority of the minorities usually suffer from poverty, poor lifestyle, living conditions, food among other factors. In that case, infant mortality is right linked to these reasons since the newborns are usually susceptible to their living environments and most of the newborns in poor families are at higher danger of SIDS than those in a staple class family (Schoendorf, Hogue, Kleinman & Rowley, 2015).
The vulnerable population that I chose to discuss on is African Americans, and the health problem of my interest was Infant mortality. The black population is the largest of the numerous ethnic and racial groups that are found within the United States who are mostly of African origin, however, there are other black individuals who do not have black ancestors. They are the descendants of slaves who were forced to work in America and hade limited rights. Most of the blacks live in the city of New York while others in Chicago and Detroit (Schoendorf et al. 2015). In this article, I will discuss many issues that revolve around infant mortality among African-Americans. These include; Reasons for newborn death amongst African-Americans such as Poverty, low socioeconomic status, prenatal care and physical health, how social injustice is experienced by African-Americans, Rawls mature theory of social justice. Finally, I will provide my proposal on a macro-level intervention recommendation to mortality among African-Americans as justified by literature review.
Reasons for Infant Mortality Among African-Americans
Infant motility in America is due to the racial division which usually begins during birth due to many disparities in the healthcare sector. Blacks have very high infant mortality rates as compared to other ethnic or racial groups in America (Chay & Greenstone, 2013). The gap continues to widen, for instance, African-Americans had the highest infant death rates in the United States of America during the 2002-2004 period. These statistics show that almost fourteen black infants died for every one thousand births. The African Americans are vulnerable to Infant mortality because of so many factors. These factors include; shortage of resources and low social and economic levels, prenatal attention and physical well-being among the blacks (Schoendorf et al. 2015).
Other minor reasons for infant mortality among the African-American population are mother’s age, poor nutrition, and birthweight related issues (McCormick, 2015). These factors will significantly affect the future economic as well as social paths of the newborns which lead to increased infant mortality among the African-Americans population. There are many improvements that have been made in the effort to reduce infant mortality among this population but colored children are almost three folds more probable to pass away early before their first anniversary than white babies. This problem is escalating due to the above factors which lead to increased infant mortality among the African-Americans population (Schoendorf et al. 2015).
Poverty and Low Socioeconomic Status Among African-Americans
Poverty And Low Socioeconomic Status Among African-Americans
Majority of black women are usually at a greater danger for parental and newborn death that is after controlling for education and socioeconomic (Schoendorf et al. 2015). Furthermore, regulatory influences displayed that the college-educated black females of African descent were three times more probable to lose their newborns as compared to the non-Hispanic white peers (Coutinho, David & Collins, 2016).
Prenatal Care Among African-Americans
The initial and adequate prenatal care is usually aimed at promoting viable gravidities and hence decrease the mother and toddler death via the maternal health screening, parental instruction and consequently therapy on the proper activities (Hart, Kunitz, Sell & Mukamel, 2014). The African American women have a very lower percentage of access to prenatal health care as associated to non-Hispanic white women, and therefore there is a lot of racial disparities in maternal and infant mortality (Schoendorf et al. 2015).
Considering the prenatal upkeep, this may be a result of divergent eminence since research show that the African America women are always given lower quality prenatal care, and hence they still experience more complications (Hart et al. 2014). Moreover, the health status, stress, health history along with discrimination might contribute to parental and toddler transience (Schoendorf et al. 2015).
Physical Health Among African-Americans
The other factor why the African American population is vulnerable to infant mortality is physical health. Smoking and substance misuse are the hazard factors which powerfully foresee preterm births, low birth weight and also infant death syndrome (Schoendorf et al. 2015). Moreover, Obesity that is greatly linked with many pregnancy problems generally forecasts toddler transience and this problem is more rampant among the African American women population (Hart et al. 2014).
How Social Injustice Is Experienced By African-Americans
The African-American population is always denied fairness in healthcare, in education and even politically. According to the American Tally Department (2015), in the year 2013 fourty five million African-Americans inhabited the United States (Hart et al. 2014). After being driven away from their normal daily exists and households which they owned in Africa and transported to Americas it has been a extraordinary fight to end separation, domination, discernment, and segregation so as to attain the final goal of fairness (Hummer et al. 2012).
African Americans have been a great force on the partisan, community, social, mythical and monetary environments in America that we know today. These events are highly valuable in the history of the USA which include the problems encountered and the improvement that has been made by African Americans from separation to the swearing in of the first African American head of State.
Rawls Mature Theory Of Social Justice To Control How Past, SES, Healthiness Blocks, And Other Elements Of Health Have Molded The Health Result For African-Americans
The theory of social justice that I selected is Rawls matured model of social justice (Clark, Anderson, Clark & Williams, 2013). This model needs us to perceive the social order as a just arrangement of collaboration over time from peer-group to the next. However, the partisan origin of fairness points to a concept of sensible citizens. That is, people are intellectual when they view one another equal in the system of collaboration over age group (Hart et al. 2014). According to Rawl, every individual has the same right to the most widespread total organization of important freedoms which are well-suited with a analogous technique of freedom for everyone. Some of the determinants of health that has shaped infant mortality among African Americans to be higher are unemployment, stress, social exclusion, food and early life (David & Collins, 2017). As an illustration, if a person is struggling to survive financially, has no job, lives in a poor house then changing the individual behaviors such as smoking may be a low priority and hence becomes vulnerable to infant mortality (Hart et al. 2014).
Prenatal Care Among African-Americans
How AIDS As A Macrostructure Affects Infant Mortality Among African-Americans
One of the social structure which affects infant mortality is AID. Aid usually contributes to reducing the inter-group or the level disparities in a situation where such variances show great. Conversely, aid usually reduces the toddler transience in less fortunate groups like children living in rural and the Muslim dominated regions (Clark et al. 2013).
My Proposal On A Macro-Level Intervention Recommendation To Mortality Among African-Americans As Justified By Literature Review
There are many changes that need to be made in our health systems and programs to reduce infant mortality among the African-Americans. To reduce this health problem, I would recommend that public awareness has to be increased about the matter of inequalities in preterm and newborn mortality along with the public’s role in addressing the problem. This is because there is no way of preventing preterm birth so far which is the most cause of infant mortality (Clark et al. 2013). Furthermore, I would say that pregnant women should be given sufficient folic acid before and throughout pregnancy to avoid neural tube flaws. Additionally, a safe infant sleep environment should also be provided (Hummer et al. 2012).
Finally, I propose that the federal government introduces a healthy people initiative which would target the many preventable threats to health so as to reduce infant mortality among the African-American population. This initiative will greatly reduce health disparities that exist across cultural and ethnic collections in America. To eliminate these ethnic and racial disparities will be facilitated by this initiative since it will address the needed significant changes that include; reducing the barriers which prevent the African-Americans as well as other disadvantaged populations from getting access to economic and social opportunities as well as good health care services. This initiative is important since the lack of access to proper health care services among the African-American population puts the infants at a great risk and disadvantage in surviving even the first birthday which denies the black society their social as well as economic contributions (Luke & Keith, 2013). Therefore, the policymakers should invest heavily in the health sector especially towards the less privileged populations especially the African-Americans so as to reduce the infant mortality cases among this population.
References
Barker, D. J., & Osmond, C. (2014). Infant mortality, childhood nutrition, and ischaemic heart disease in England and Wales. The Lancet, 327(8489), 1077-1081.
Chay, K. Y., & Greenstone, M. (2013). The impact of air pollution on infant mortality: evidence from geographic variation in pollution shocks induced by a recession. The quarterly journal of economics, 118(3), 1121-1167.
Clark, R., Anderson, N. B., Clark, V. R., & Williams, D. R. (2013). Racism as a stressor for African Americans: A biopsychosocial model. American Psychologist, 54(10), 805.
Clark, R., Anderson, N. B., Clark, V. R., & Williams, D. R. (2014). Racism as a stressor for African Americans: A biopsychosocial model. American Psychologist, 54(10), 805.
Coutinho, R., David, R. J., & Collins Jr, J. W. (2016). Relation of parental birth weights to infant birth weight among African Americans and whites in Illinois: a transgenerational study. American Journal of Epidemiology, 146(10), 804-809.
David, R. J., & Collins Jr, J. W. (2017). Differing birth weight among infants of US-born blacks, African-born blacks, and US-born whites. New England Journal of Medicine, 337(17), 1209-1214.
Hart, K. D., Kunitz, S. J., Sell, R. R., & Mukamel, D. B. (2014). Metropolitan governance, residential segregation, and mortality among African Americans. American Journal of Public Health, 88(3), 434-438.
Hauck, F. R., Herman, S. M., Donovan, M., Iyasu, S., Moore, C. M., Donoghue, E., … & Willinger, M. (2016). Sleep environment and the risk of sudden infant death syndrome in an urban population: the Chicago Infant Mortality Study. Pediatrics, 111(Supplement 1), 1207-1214.
Hummer, R. A., Powers, D. A., Pullum, S. G., Gossman, G. L., & Frisbie, W. P. (2012). Paradox found (again): infant mortality among the Mexican-origin population in the United States. Demography, 44(3), 441-457.
Luke, B., & Keith, L. G. (2013). The contribution of singletons, twins and triplets to low birth weight, infant mortality, and handicap in the United States. The Journal of reproductive medicine, 37(8), 661-666.
McCormick, M. C. (2015). The contribution of low birth weight to infant mortality and childhood morbidity. New England journal of medicine, 312(2), 82-90.
Schoendorf, K. C., Hogue, C. J., Kleinman, J. C., & Rowley, D. (2015). Mortality among infants of black as compared with white college-educated parents. New England Journal of Medicine, 326(23), 1522-1526.
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