Inequalities In The Structure And Delivery Of U.s. Health Care

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Degree type
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Graduate group
Demography
Discipline
Subject
Health disparities
Health services research
Medical sociology
Patient care
Physicians
Social demography
Demography, Population, and Ecology
Health and Medical Administration
Sociology
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
2022-10-05T20:22:00-07:00
Distributor
Related resources
Author
Schut, Rebecca Anna
Contributor
Abstract

Although healthcare inequalities by race-ethnicity and nativity have been widely explored, more research is needed to investigate how these inequalities result from structures of racial stratification and immigrant exclusion operating within U.S. health care. My dissertation employs hand coded restricted-access medical record data, linked survey data, and rich administrative data to examine the factors generating healthcare inequalities experienced by both patients and physicians. I contextualize these inequalities within a broader U.S. landscape characterized by structural racism and nativism. In the first chapter, I examine the impact of state immigration policy contexts on healthcare access of U.S. agricultural workers representing various racial-ethnic identities and legal statuses between 2005-2012. I find state-level immigration policy contexts are strongly associated with healthcare access among documented non-White Latinx agricultural workers, who report lower levels of healthcare access and greater barriers to care-seeking in increasingly restrictive policy contexts. In the second chapter, I use hand coded electronic medical record data to examine provider-patient communication disparities. Black and Latinx patients are less likely than White patients to receive provider communication regarding a new incidental medical finding diagnosis. This disparity may reflect interpersonal racism between providers and patients of color, resulting from the perpetuation of racial mythologies in medicine. In the third chapter, I use geocoded data from the American Medical Association to explore whether subgroups of international medical graduates (IMGs) experience career stratification based on their country of medical education. I find IMGs trained in developing countries chart more marginalized U.S. career paths relative to those trained in developed countries, suggesting that nativism and racism within the medical profession intersect to disadvantage physicians from developing countries, who often are also people of color. My dissertation generates empirical evidence to show how racism and nativism operating within the U.S. healthcare system generate inequalities among people of color and immigrants. These findings have important implications not only for our understanding of racial inequality and social stratification broadly, but also for informing policy and intervention to promote equity within U.S. health care.

Advisor
Chenoa A. Flippen
Date of degree
2022-01-01
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Journal Issue
Comments
Recommended citation