Simple Ways To Boost Health Care Access for People With Communication Disorders

The objectives—and perhaps even more interesting, the disparities within the objectives according to sex, educational attainment and disability status—are tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics. We can search the CDC’s database by topic area for additional data on health care disparities. While the government works toward the Healthy People initiative, we can help improve health care access for those with communication disorders in our communities. I started by considering people’s social determinants of health in my community and surrounding areas. Improve access in your community Whether you plan to change your own model of care or simply provide more resources for your patients or anyone who calls your office, here are some ways ways we (me, an audiologist, and my partner, a speech-language pathologist) work to make the disparity gap a bit smaller: Educate yourself more on the social determinants of health. Here in California, we use the Let’s Get Healthy California initiative as a guide. Something I want to revisit is a topic I tackled in graduate school—the effect of lead exposure on the auditory system. I already know the population most at-risk of lead poisoning—low-income children living in old housing—lacks resources for the central auditory assessment needed to pinpoint any related deficits. I plan to contact my local Childhood Lead Prevention Program and offer my knowledge and time ...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Audiology Health Care Private Practice Slider Speech-Language Pathology hearing loss Language Disorders Speech Disorders Source Type: blogs