According to reports, there are about one million Latino smokers in California. A recent study has shown that these smokers get less help when it comes to quitting even after having the benefits of Medi-Cal.
Latino Smokers Get Less Help In Quitting Even When They Have Medi-Cal
Compared to other smokers who visit health professionals, Latino smokers get less assistance from professionals.
Experts believe that other methods outside of the clinical encounter need to be used to target such people at the community level. The government is making appropriate efforts to include more people under the health insurance cover.
The services were expanded and combined into Medi-Cal in California, and this provided a lot of benefits to nearly 3 million people in the state. Almost 40% of the new beneficiaries of this scheme were Latinos.
There are several reasons for the disparity in getting service from health professionals. According to some experts, Latinos did not make frequent visits to health professionals, especially with smoking issues. Due to this reason, they are likely to miss out on appropriate guidance about tobacco cessation programs.
To bridge the gap, several organizations that work to spread awareness about cancer work in the community to reach tobacco users. They have also provided counseling services in the Spanish language to encourage more people from the community to attend tobacco cessation programs.
In the same manner, several people from the Asian community in California face a similar situation. The organizations that spread awareness about cancer also work with such members and conduct programs in Asian languages in order to increase the participation of such people.
Several experts feel that tobacco cessation programs should be aimed at various levels to reach every person irrespective of social and economic background. In this way, the burden on the health system will reduce by a considerable margin in the long run.
It is important to note that cancer is one of the biggest killers in the US, and smoking is one of the main reasons for a variety of cancers. It is beneficial for everyone involved to spread awareness about the harmful effects of smoking among the working class as they are more likely to suffer from serious consequences due to a lack of medical facilities.
Cancer is still an expensive disease, and many people from the lower-income groups cannot afford good quality treatment in the US. Due to this reason, it is important to protect such people from the risks of cancer.
It is generally observed that Latinos hesitate to visit the health professionals for general illness, and they usually reserve the health cover facility only for big health problems. On the other hand, there are a lot of benefits of regularly visiting health professionals for chronic issues. In this way, the health condition of such patients can be monitored regularly, and treatment can be given on time.
Apart from that, there are many language barriers even to this day when it comes to accessing treatment. Several Latinos in the lower-income groups are not comfortable with English, and they may hesitate to get assistance from health professionals due to this reason.
In order to promote health care services among such people, it is important that health professionals offer guidance in multiple languages as per the comfort level of the patient. In the same manner, community-level participation has to increase in order to conduct tobacco cessation programs successfully.
This will also benefit the health insurance companies in the long run as they will have a few claims to settle when they are able to avoid deadly diseases in a large number of people.
