Community service is needed to ensure that people are able to learn about their communities. We often see people poorly educated about their local issues which can lead to insensitivity and an inability to communicate with the local population. When you are able to communicate and interact with people around you, especially in at-risk populations you are able to gain empathy. Empathy is putting yourself into somebody else’s shoes and realizing you can’t fully understand their predicament because you haven’t been through it. Instead, you can understand that the situation is not one you would want to go through yourself. A sense of empathy promotes sensitivity to situations because you attempt to recognize how their predicament would affect you. This allows you to provide optimal support because you are able to recognize and think about possible interventions to assist a person through their situation. While doing community service you hear so many different people’s stories and it really allows you to practice empathy and ultimately gain empathy as a tool for later.
Community service also helps you to view and understand different cultures.I have used my experiences to promote transcultural nursing. For example, I regularly volunteer with GSFB in Auburn, Maine. I use to go out to a nursing home within the auburn community to hand out food boxes. During this time I met an amazing woman who told me all about her life in Mexico. I learned about The day of the Dead a very important part of her culture. She remembered these days as a child making the proper preparations. I also learned how coping is different between cultures. Extended sorrow and coping are normalized in Central America. The US may automatically assume somebody is failing to cope however they may just be coping in a manner that aligns with their culture. I contributed to my community and it helped me to improve my transcultural care for my future patients.
Currently, we are facing an issue with poor health outcomes for people within the BIPOC community. African American women are at higher risk for high blood pressure, preterm birth, and maternal demise than caucasian women. African American mothers are at a 52% higher risk of having a preterm birth meaning before 37 weeks (Barber, 2022). Indigenous women have a stillbirth rate of 22 out of 1,000 births which is substantially higher than their white counterparts’ rate of 5 in 1,000 births (Busch, 2022). We aren’t providing quality healthcare for the BIPOC and Indigenous communities.
BIPOC and Indigenous people tend to be affected more negatively by their social determinants of health. These determinants include access to money, access to health facilities, and access to judgemental free care. BIPOC communities are highly affected by structural racism which has led to an increased rate of poverty for BIPOC populations. While using the opportunity atlas I was able to identify that the southern states have an increased population of BIPOC communities. These states also have some of the highest poverty rates. This means that people aren’t able to really afford medical care. These people aren’t able to afford transportation to their medical care, or the actual care itself. This reduces the rates of prenatal care which ultimately increases the likelihood of a preterm baby or a fetal demise. Premature infants also can be contributed to a lack of available food meaning if the mom isn’t able to eat baby will likely be reduced in size and come prematurely. This is able to be monitored during prenatal visits however due to lack of income patients aren’t receiving this monitoring and babies are being born earlier and earlier.
Another contributing factor to this issue of premature babies is the stress levels of BIPOC mothers. The stress hormone cortisol increases when you experience stress which increases blood pressure. This blood pressure increase should be temporary however people in the BIPOC community tend to be in a regular state of stress due to racism. It isn’t easy to go about your life having to worry about police brutality, racial profiling, and lengthened prison sentences. There are so many other things that contribute to even further stress such as the oppression that has led to generational poverty. But since people within these communities are experiencing a constant level of stress their BP doesn’t rebound to a normal level and the increase in BP becomes hypertension. This hypertension can cause the mother to have to birth a child early as well. The stress hormones also cause stress for the fetus and early delivery becomes the best option. In “How to be an Antiracist” Kendi stated, “African Americans are far more likely than Whites to be jailed for drug offenses. Nonviolent Black drug offenders remain in prisons for about the Same length of time (58.7 months) as violent white criminals (61.7 months) (Kendi, 2019). This quote goes to show how our court systems continue to create these stressors which contribute to increased hypertension in BIPOC populations. Caucasians have a prevalence rate of 34% whilst African Americans have a prevalence rate of 42% (Aggarwal et al., 2021).
~HR
Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist. One World, 2019.
Barber, K. F. S., & Robinson, M. D. (2022). Examining the Influence of Racial Discrimination on
Adverse Birth Outcomes: An Analysis of the Virginia Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), 2016–2018. Maternal & Child Health Journal, 26(4), 691–699. https://doi-org.wv-o-ursus-proxy01.ursus.maine.edu/10.1007/s10995-021-03223-2
Busch, S. L. P., Houweling, T. A. J., Pradhan, H., Gope, R., Rath, S., Kumar, A., Nath, V., Prost, A., & Nair, N. (2022). Socioeconomic inequalities in stillbirth and neonatal mortality rates: evidence on Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups in eastern India. International Journal for Equity in Health, 21(1), 1–16. https://doi-org.wv-o-ursus-proxy01.ursus.maine.edu/10.1186/s12939-022-01655-y Aggarwal, R., Chiu, N., Wadhera, R. K., Moran, A. E., Raber, I., Shen, C., Yeh, R. W., & Kazi, D. S. (2021). Racial/ethnic disparities in hypertension prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control in the United States, 2013 to 2018. Hypertension, 78(6), 1719–1726. https://doi.org/10.1161/hypertensionaha.121.17570
Community Service: Destructive or Empowering? 