The article entitled The community action model: A community-driven model designed to address disparities in health outlines the steps a community can put in place in order to build and raise its capacity to address numerous health issues (Lavery et al., 2005).
It also outlines the fundamental steps that can be taken in order to decimate health disparity in community alongside addressing economic, social and environmental issues that bring about health disparity. In this case, it provides a framework through which a community can acquire skills and resources in order to plan, evaluate and implement necessary actions and policies to minimize health disparity (Lavery et al., 2005).
It is notable that the action model described in the article was developed in order to address health disparity issues related to tobacco consumption. In line with this, Lavery et al (2005) argue that socio-economic status is one of the factors that determine health status, and hence it has caused significant health disparity.
It is evident from the article that ethnicity and race are crucial factors that determine one’s social economic status. Hence, people who are from minor races have poor health and experience high mortality rates (Adler et al., 1994). It is important to note that the article is quite detailed and therefore the reader is able to grasp adequate information at a glance.
Nevertheless, this article cannot go without being critiqued since it lacks a coherent flow of ideas. For instance, it mentions social economic wellbeing as one of the factors that causes health disparity without expounding on the concept of socio-economic status in details.
The article also addresses issues of race and ethnicity and how they determine health status (Lavery et al., 2005). Shortly after this, the article discusses tobacco as a major cause of health problems and deaths among people who are of low socio-economic status. Therefore, it is evident that there is lack a smooth flow of ideas in the article. Regardless of the fact that the language used is coherent, the reader’s mind may easily be mixed up since ideas presented have overlapped each other.
Moreover, the article does not directly address what is stated in the title. Notably, instead of beginning by addressing community action model, the article presents other information that does not connect to the title. Instead, the authors could have provided a detailed introduction of the topic on health disparity in order to give a clear flow of thoughts.
From a careful review of literature, it is evident that tobacco causes ill health and deaths among people of low socio-economic status (Adler et al., 1994). Besides, the article does not illustrate why tobacco consumption is more prevalent among people of lower social status. Moreover, it is not clearly stated why the minor races and ethnic groups are the most susceptible to smocking tobacco.
Notably, the article aimed to analyze the social, environmental and economic factors that affect social and health inequalities in society (Lavery et al, 2005). In this case, one should expect that such factors will be discussed individually. However, there is no clear distinction between the social, economic and environmental factors. Therefore, it makes it difficult for the audience to identify them from the article.
Additionally, lack of clear guidelines makes the authors to go off the topic. For instance, one can note that the discussion on tobacco consumption takes a greater part of the article and to some extent, the ideas are mixed up. Furthermore, the article has references but there are no in text citations and therefore, one cannot identify where some ideas were obtained from.
References
Adler, N. et al. (1994). Socioeconomic status and health: the challenge of the gradient. American Psychology. 49(1), 15–24.
Lavery, S. et al. (2005). The community action model: A community-driven model designed to address disparities in health. American Journal of Public Health, 95(4), 611-616.