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More and more people are making strides in obtaining health care coverage, partly in response to the passing of the Affordable Care Act. For Latinos, they are still the largest uninsured population in the country. All across the country, Latinos are the fastest growing population. This is no exception in the state of Nebraska.
However, Latinos in Nebraska lag far behind in both medical care and health insurance coverage. Over 35% of all Latino adults between the ages of 18 and 64 do not have a personal physician. This has been shown to lead to a host of potentially serious medical conditions.
“Lack of medical care. Latinos do not have access to health or mental health services, they don’t have a medical home or primary care facility,” said Dr. Aida Maisonet Giachello, research professor with Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Giachello has found that there are a number of major challenges and issues in regards to health equity for the Latino community in Nebraska. There is a need for a different approach for healthcare professionals when approaching and treating Latino patients.
“The fact that in [Latin American countries] there is more personalizationo (personalism) people, physicians pay attention, listen to you, and not just listen to you,” she explained. “But ask the question, ‘Is there any, everything else fine with your family, your husband?’”
The University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) has begun focusing its outreach in a different direction aimed more toward the Latino community. According to the research from the Office of Latin and Latino American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (O.L.L.A.S), almost one-third of the Latino population is uninsured. It is the belief of some researchers at UNMC that these tendencies would change if the healthcare providers came from the same background or spoke the same language as the Latino patients. Other challenges that face Latinos, especially in the state of Nebraska, are language barriers and disparate cultural belief systems.
“The major thing right now is they’re trying to do more recruitment for more students that are from Latino backgrounds so that we can train and develop a workforce that can actually go into the community and be more, relate more to the community,” said Guerra.
The current poverty rate of Latinos in Nebraska is three times higher than non–Hispanic whites and was 27% as in 2009. Giachello believes a lack of financial resources or knowledge of how health insurance works is perpetuating the cycle of health disparities in Nebraska for Latinos.
“[It turns out] that when they go to the doctor [Latinos] say ‘you know what, you have $5,000 deductible so you have to pay out of your pocket before the insurance kicks in,’ then people with insurance now are not going because they don’t have the $5,000 to put up front in visits.”
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By The Numbers
25.1
percent
of Latinos remain without health insurance coverage
