Wellness Programs : Wellness Programs and Ethnic Profiling.
In many segments of society, we hear about racial and ethnic profiling in negative ways. But what about when it comes to wellness programs?
When used for the specific purpose of starting – or assessing - a wellness or disease management (DM) program, profiling isn’t just legal. It’s also encouraged.
Affects health risks
Different racial and ethnic groups tend to be more at risk – for genetic and/or cultural reasons – of certain health problems. Examples –
• African-American, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islanders are at higher risk of diabetes than Caucasian employees
• Chinese women are statistically twice as likely to get cervical cancer
• Caucasians have disproportionately high rates of obesity and high blood pressure, and
• Latinos have higher rates of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary illness than other groups. The HIV/AIDS population is also disproportionately Hispanic.
Bottom line – By evaluating the ethnic breakdown of your staff member population, you are able to set disease management (DM) program priorities with greater confidence and accuracy.
Health Care quality an issue
A few studies also show there’s an unfortunate relationship between ethnicity and quality of healthcare. A lot of times, minority workers receive inferior treatment and health education at the same facilities where others receive top-notch care.
This usually happens for innocent reasons. A common scenario – a lack of Spanish-speaking doctors in the network for your Latino personnel. But the result is usually higher health care costs for you and, often, greater reluctance among minority personnel to seek needed treatments.
By profiling workers against the physicians in the network, you ultimately help workers get the care they need and the organization to better control long-term costs.