 |
||
 |
 |
|
|
MA/PhD Theses Abstracts of Current Students & Alumni |
 |
|
Juvelis, Joy Ann 1998. ACCESS TO PRIMARY HEALTH CARE FOR HIV+ AFRICAN-AMERICANS: POLITICS, ECONOMICS, AND "RACE"
Abstract: African-Americans are dramatically over-represented
in the nation's AIDS epidemic, accounting for 56% of adult female,
35% of adult male, and 61% of pediatric AIDS cases reported during 1995.
Historically, African-Americans have had greater difficulty accessing
health services than have their Euro-American counterparts. The Aids
epidemic has brought to a crescendo intrinsic inequities in health
care delivery and differential access for African-Americans and other
minorities in the United States. The scores of studies investigating
access to health services in the last twenty-five years have been primarily
quantitative, usually concluding that the barriers to care are economically
based, ignoring the larger picture of the socio-cultural implications
for economic disparities and ignoring the significance of the impact
of the community environment on health care access. This study identifies
and documents, through both qualitative and quantitative research methods,
barriers to primary health care for both HIV+ Euro-American and African-American
clients of three ethnically diverse community-based HIV/AIDS case management
agencies in Monroe County, an area in the southeastern United States.
The primary barriers identified were lack of health insurance, as well
as the lack of transportation, stable housing, and telephone service.
A history of recent incarceration intensified the difficulties accessing
care. A political economy framework is utilized to demonstrate the
ways in which the health care delivery system in Monroe County reflects
the priorities and the organization of the larger system that helped
to create it and continues to support it, and that this system could
not dominate without the sanction of those with economic, political,
and social power both locally and nationally.
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|