Juliana Sanchez Health Quiz

Juliana Sanchez, 518 words

The health of the United States varies among geographic and demographic differences. For the article titled "Racial Prejudice and Spending in Drug Rehabilitation: The Role of Attitudes Toward Blacks and Latinos" by Amie Nielsen and colleagues, it is examined how important drug rehabilitation is to the majority of the United States which is white people. For this study data was retrieved from the GSS and only white respondents were examined. The survey answers were from the years 1990 and 2000, and the dependent variable was attitudes towards spending money on drug rehabilitation. This was tested by asking if they thought that there was too little, too much, or about the right amount of money being spent on drug rehabilitation in the US. The independent variable tested for was prejudice towards Blacks and Latinos. The independent variable was tested by asking the degree of acceptance towards living with such races and if a family member were to marry someone Black or Latino. It was also asked how lazy, intelligent, and violence prone the races were believed to be. The control variables were age, sex, income, education, etc. The results from this study showed that 2/3 of respondents believed that spending was too little, 55% opposed someone from their family marrying a Black or Latino person, and 40% disagreed with living in a neighborhood where there was Blacks present. Those that believed that spending was too high for drug rehabilitation also were more likely to answer that they disagreed with living or marrying someone Black or Latino. Those that claimed that spending was too little blamed discrimination and lack of resources for the reason why Blacks and Latinos struggle to be successful rather than claiming that they just have an inborn ability. The control variables that were significant were sex, urban residence, and discrimination. The study shows that it is believed that those who use drugs are of darker skin tones and there is high disagreement with spending more money on such individuals. The second study titled "Beyond Acculturation: Immigration, Discrimination, and Health Research Among Mexicans in the United States" by Edna A. Viruell-Fuentes focuses on the difference in health between first-generation and second-generation immigrants.  The research was conducted by performing in-depth interviews with 40 first and second-generation Mexican immigrant women from southwest Detroit. These interviews were about one to three hours long and asked open-ended questions.  First-generation women were those who moved to the US as adults and second-generation were those who were born in the US or moved before the age of 12. The study found that first-generation women had better health because they were not constantly facing the feeling of not fitting in and were happy to have a job and a community similar to the one they had in Mexico. They faced discrimination much less and interacted sparsely with other races. Those who were second-generation women went to school and worked with other races a lot more and constantly faced bullying, discrimination, feeling out of place, and had an overall sense that they knew they were seen as inferior to everyone else. The difference in experience from one group of women to the other accounted greatly for the overall health of each group as the less discrimination they faced the better health they had.