The Role of Cultural Health Capital in Healthcare
Cultural health capital is the bundle of skills and knowledge that enables individuals to navigate the healthcare system effectively and efficiently and work and communicate with healthcare providers to help obtain key health advantages. Gengler (2016) notes that it is particularly vital within an unequal landscape of healthcare services. It is pivotal in enabling patients’ families to strategically negotiate the hierarchical U.S. healthcare system and gain access to better care.
In this case, families with less cultural health capital were more likely to be shuffled to the lower levels of the healthcare system before being referred to better options. For instance, the Campos-Maldonados or the Marins had a high level of cultural health capital. They had access to resources to depend on, such as a leave of absence, salary, and medical knowledge, which paved the way for better care, unlike the Hendersons.
Families with high cultural health capital mostly took charge and started care-captaining when faced with a life-threatening illness of their children. Gengler (2016) observed that these families remained highly involved in providing medical care for their children by negotiating with physicians, asking for medical changes and treatment interventions, and poring over detailed information on daily lab reports. For instance, parents like the Bialys and Marins frequently monitored their children’s medical care by making suggestions and asking questions.
Moreover, they gave detailed information to healthcare providers concerning their children’s responses to previous treatments that went beyond what was recorded in their medical records. With this involvement, parents with high cultural health capital could spot and prevent medical errors and hold healthcare providers responsible for their errors, preventing the recurrence of such mistakes. Accumulating these small advantages could help a sick child become more comfortable, stronger, and less susceptible to pain and distress.
Exploring Care-Captaining and Care-Entrusting
Unlike the families that take charge and participate in treating their children, some feel more comfortable leaving control of decisions to healthcare providers and letting them establish what treatments are most appropriate for their children. Care-entrusting is where parents delegate all the decision-making power to their physicians in determining the best medical course. This group mainly consisted of working-class and low-income families, as they were more inclined to care-entrust themselves and lacked the resources to enable their involvement in the treatment process.
Gengler (2016) noticed that families with less cultural health capital directed their caregiving efforts to nonmedical matters such as emotional support. They believed that their child’s medical team was most qualified to guide the safety of their children. For instance, instead of personally seeking the best alternatives, Mary Shaw and Pauline Donnoly, working-class custodial grandmothers, followed the referrals of local doctors for the best treatment options for their children, which landed them in Kelly-Reed.
In another case, Lakira Harris, a working-class, black single mother of four, had to travel miles to seek medication for her son Jayden, but not because she researched Kelly-Reid. Instead, it was because the local doctors struggled to manage her son’s sickle cell disease and eventually sent them to Kelly-Reed for further treatment. Following the frequent hospitalizations of her son Jayden, she was forced to resign from her job as a security guard to take care of him (Gengler, 2016). This venture proved more difficult for Lakira due to her lack of cultural health capital, which restricted her involvement.
Personal Reflection: What Stood Out in the Article
The most interesting part of the article is the unequal and significant disparities in the provision of healthcare services based on the level of cultural health capital that a family has. For instance, if families like the Campos-Maldonaldos lacked their social networks, financial resources, expertise in research, and medical terminologies, it is unlikely that they would receive the specialized treatment and care that their children needed. Families with high cultural health capital were prescribed more effective and complex treatment regimens. In contrast, the poor and working class, like the Hendersons, received simpler and less beneficial regimens and were more likely to be attended to by a different doctor every visit. This indicates the influence of cultural health capital in getting effective treatment, necessitating a change to improve the healthcare system.
References
Gengler, A. (2016). Getting the most out of the U.S. healthcare system. Contexts, 15(1), 36–41. Web.