Identifying the Health Needs of Hispanic Women from a Church Community
Title: Identifying the Health Needs of Hispanic Women from a Church Community
- Identify three health issues of Hispanic women
- Examine how access to and satisfaction with care can affect nursing practice
- Describe how health promotion interventions can be tailored to this specific population
In the absence of adequate primary care, the uninsured go without care, utilize the emergency department (ED) as a primary care facility and ultimately experience health disparities. Accurate assessments of present service use by the poor and underserved will allow for improved planning of services and the development of policy that will target the needs of ‘invisible’ populations. In the US, two of the most salient factors determining access to care are whether or not a person has health insurance and the person’s race or ethnicity. Hispanics account for about one third of the uninsured in the US.
Design: Cross sectional exploratory
Setting: Primarily Hispanic church in the Northeast US
Sample: 66 Hispanic women
Methods: A 94-item Health Needs Assessment was used to collect data. Descriptive statistics, chi square and t-tests were used to analyze the data.
Results: The most common health issue among this population was obesity/overweight. Thirty two percent of the women were not US citizens. Satisfaction with care was significant among those with insurance, who were US citizens and had a medical diagnosis. Thirty seven percent of the women used the emergency room as their usual source of care, 41% reported their health as fair to poor and preventive service rates were lower than what has been reported in the literature.
Conclusion/Implications for nursing practice:
Health needs assessments are useful in understanding sub-populations within communities. Advanced practice nurses and nurses need to gain insight into issues that affect their female clients such as: access to and satisfaction with care, how preventive services are utilized, and specific health needs. Culturally appropriate interventions can then de designed and implemented specifically for populations of women served.
Keywords: access to care; health needs; Hispanic women; disparities