Professor Delroy Louden – President of ACC has just published a new book – Health Ethnicity and Well-Being – An African American Perspective published by Xlibris press in the United States.
The text has a preface written by Professor Robert Beck, Senior Vice President and Chief Academic Officer – at the Fox Chase Cancer Center and Temple University Partnership Group. Professor Beck is no stranger to Anguilla and the ACC. He has visited several times including for the President’s Installation in 2012 when he met with the Hon Minister of Health Mr. Edison Baird and the Permanent Secretary, Health, Dr Bonnie Richardson-Lake regarding establishing linkages and collaboration in cancer education.
Professor Louden’s chapter in the book is titled “Epidemiological Issues – “Critical Factors in Cultural Competent Health Care” in which he explores the demographic population shifts in the US and Canada that is driving the need for a more responsive health care delivery system in these countries. He describes the “Push” factors namely the demand for persons with particular skill sets needed in these countries and the “Pull’ factors the inability of many third world countries to satisfy professional opportunities for those whom they have often trained but are unable to retain, as major contributing factors to this changing demographic landscape.
Overall, the book addresses those who influence the delivery of health care, especially policy makers, politicians and health care providers whose attitudes and beliefs affect the extent to which the health care services provided to this emerging and more diverse population are effective, humane, reliable and compassionate. In short, practitioners who deliver health care today must, of necessity, be more responsive to the needs of this new population than was the case thirty or forty years ago. This has major implications for training of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, clinical social workers and all those on the front line providing health services.
Delroy Louden
Throughout the text there are many references to health disparities. These are differences in the incidence, prevalence, mortality, and burden of diseases and other adverse health conditions that exist among specific population groups.
For us in the Caribbean, there are important lessons contained therein. Firstly, given our limited resources and our population characteristics we have not focused on ensuring that persons get care. We have seldom, if at all, addressed the quality of care that our people receive. Secondly, we have not adequately developed appropriate metrics to measure outcome performance indicators of our Health Care delivery system. Thirdly, we have not determined how universal patient satisfaction surveys are in examining the health/clinical services provided to our population and fourthly, we are not using the findings from these surveys to inform the quality of services.
Finally, the ACC President sees publications such as this, as well as a peer review paper on the ‘Treatment of Adolescent Obesity’ published earlier in 2013, as attempts to introduce the ACC in the wider Academic Community of Scholarship and Research. This is an ongoing passion, although teaching remains the corner stone of this young institution, scholarly activity must not lag behind.
(Published without editing by The Anguillian newspaper.)
