Health Inequalities - Dissertation Example

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Abstract Among the social issues that have increasingly intrigued and interested sociologists is health. Specifically, health inequalities and inequities on the basis of one’s ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, gender, sex and culture have been the focus of quite a number of sociology researches in recent times. Although earlier studies did not focus much on the influences of factors such as ethnicity and race on health and health care, recent researchers have realised that minority ethnic groups and lower socioeconomic status people are more prone to experience unequal treatment at the hands of medical professionals and government policies.

Fortunately, the recent increase in data/information availability and knowledge about health inequalities has made the lay public more informed about their risks of exposure to discriminatory health practices. Just like ethnicity, socioeconomic status has played quite a crucial role in shaping health and health care practices and trends in the contemporary society. Consequent to these apparent inequalities targeting ethnic minorities and lower socioeconomic groups, governments, health professional and.

To develop the best understanding of the subject of this study, an extensive review of the available literatures on ethnic and socioeconomic health inequalities and other related topics was conducted. Generally, the last three decades have realised an increased literary coverage of socioeconomic class- and ethnic-based inequalities in health and health care, more so among minority populations. Nonetheless, the recent success in these publications would not have been achieved were it not for the works of earlier authors that researched early immigrant ethnic minorities.

Unfortunately, most of these early works focused more on the material aspects of health inequalities than they did on the cultural, racial and ethnic aspects. In essence, given the class location of minority ethnic groups, it would be correct to assert that such material issues would be related and relevant to ethnic inequalities (Smith et al., 1996). However, other later authors have developed the opinion that the material and class explanations are not conclusive on the health inequalities encountered by minority ethnic groups.

In fact, these authors could not entirely connect the high mortality rate among the immigrants to Britain with material issues. A number of authors have mentioned in their studies and articles that peoples’ ethnicity, particularly the minority ethnic groups, has been used to target or discriminate against them in accessing health care . These inequalities have finally affected the general health of ethnic minorities.