Sydney Wilder
A11409738
Julia Rogers/ A05
SOCI 40 Essay Assignment
Falling ill without the sufficient amount of money or not having access to health institutions, people face a tough time receiving the adequate care that is essential to their lives. This is demonstrated in the book Mama Might be Better off Dead composed by Laurie Kaye Abraham. The book Mama Might be Better off Dead is about the Banes family, an African American family, living in poverty in Chicago that struggle to deal with diseases on a day to day basis. Not only do they struggle with having a diseases taking a toll on the family, but also they struggle with trying to pay for treatments, doctor visits, and medicine. This book provides a small representation of how the overall African American's health is affected when it comes to diseases. Explained by the book Minority Populations and Health by Thomas LaVeist, the top five leading causes of death for Blacks are heart disease, cancer, stroke, injuries, and diabetes (2005).
English: Mergenthaler Hall, Johns Hopkins Universi...
English: Gilman Hall, Johns Hopkins University, Ba...
English: The Nichols House at Johns Hopkins Univer...There are three mechanisms that best explain the Banes' family health outcome: individual socioeconomic status, resource deprivation, and self-efficacy.
To begin with, the Banes have been strongly affected by their socioeconomic status. Socioeconomic status is a measurement of class by viewing a person's income, education, and occupation (Barr 2008). Not being able to make enough money to see an actual specialist to get treated or have the disease fully explained, Robert Banes faces a hard time dealing with failing kidneys in chapter one. Robert Banes dropped out of college, and has not been able to keep a job with decent pay for more than a couple of months, which causes him to not to be able to pay for his treatments or better health care services. Even though he is not...