While all healthcare would ideally be patient-centered, there are some situations where the patient’s needs are more intentionally considered and addressed. In such cases, a patient’s unique healthcare needs and desired outcomes are the guides for how healthcare efforts proceed — a patient and their doctor working together as a team, holistically addressing patient concerns. This approach allows for a customized, evergreen patient care plan that includes input from patients and their families, as well as doctors and specialists.
Not everyone has equal access to this type of healthcare, however. Systemic issues, environmental changes, and broadly reaching epidemics can affect the quality and accessibility of healthcare.
When the demand for healthcare rises above the supply of doctors, the all-encompassing approach of intentionally patient-centered healthcare can be lost. If you’re passionate about keeping the patient and their needs central to your practice and treatment plans and you want to help your local healthcare centers accomplish this, consider a career in community medicine.
What Factors are Impacting Equal Access to Healthcare?
In an ideal world, everyone would have access to compassionate, comprehensive healthcare in a way that was accessible to them. However, there are a variety of barriers to equal access to healthcare, and these barriers create widespread and enduring problems within the public health of communities.
Health Equity vs. Health Disparity: What’s the Difference?
Health equity is the term used to describe social justice in health. It refers to the desire that no one should be denied the possibility to be healthy and to receive necessary healthcare. Health disparities are the factors that are measured to determine how near or far a community is to health equity.
There are many factors that contribute to health disparities, including social determinants of health (SDOH). But what is a social determinant of health? We’ve outlined some examples:
- Cost: healthcare is expensive, and those without insurance or those with inadequate insurance benefits are forced to pay out-of-pocket for their healthcare needs. In many cases, this leads to debt, or individuals decide not to seek healthcare so they don’t have to pay for it.
- Distance: if there is inadequate access to healthcare within communities, those who are not as mobile or able-bodied may be left uncared for. Ensuring every community has sufficient access to quality healthcare near them is essential.
- The need for specialists: In cases where healthcare hasn’t been provided and patient conditions worsen, a specialist is often required. However, receiving treatment from a specialist is often more expensive, and the same issues of distance and access apply to those seeking specialty care.
- Lack of public health education: Sometimes the best care is preventative care. When communities are more informed about the risks of certain activities, like substance abuse or sexual activities, they’re able to make more informed choices for themselves. But when communities lack the resources to run clinics or educational sessions, the public can suffer from the lack of preventative care.
In order to reach health equity, healthcare professionals must seek to engage in patient-centered healthcare. This means a higher engagement in community medicine, preventative education and care, and a prioritizing of patient well-being over financial gain or convenience. By working in community medicine, you’ll improve community health by working with each patient individually. You’ll see the long-term impact of your work through the ripples that one well-cared-for patient can make.
What’s the Difference Between Public Health and Community Medicine?
Both public health and community medicine help to improve access to and quality of healthcare in communities. However, public health tends to take a broader, 30,000-foot-level view of the state of medicine and healthcare. Community medicine is a specialization within public health.
Professionals in public health careers approach solutions for public health issues through a more general lens. Whereas, within community medicine, professionals examine the existing public health issue and determine how it affects specific, marginalized groups within communities. They take their investigations further, discovering and addressing factors like systemic poverty and cultural systems contributing to public health issues.
Want to know more about the difference between public health and community medicine? Read our blog post on it!
How Do I Know If I Should Work in Community Medicine?
We’ve discussed how public health and community medicine work in conjunction to provide the best possible patient care both globally and locally. Choosing to specialize in community medicine allows you to specialize in working with underserved populations and at-risk communities and to be more involved in the day-to-day efforts to improve their access to healthcare.
You would thrive in a career in community medicine if you:
- Are looking for a non-clinical approach to engaging your community’s healthcare: Community medicine does impact access to healthcare and can include helping to organize clinics and healthcare initiatives like vaccine centers, but there is generally less direct patient care involved.
- Want to impact social determinants of health: Community medicine seeks to go beyond the present issues facing the community and see what factors are contributing to the bigger issue. By addressing both the problem itself and the systems that caused the problem in the first place, community medicine professionals can help more people receive the care they need and prevent further inequalities in care.
- Want to influence and improve public safety and education and reduce unemployment: Those who work in community medicine can help improve public safety by working hand-in-hand with community members to learn what is happening throughout the area and what the needs are. They can help run courses that address issues such as disease prevention, nutrition, and more. Through their awareness of the community’s needs, professionals in this field can help reduce unemployment by working with nearby organizations to employ people and improve everyone’s access to quality healthcare.
- Are passionate about social justice and healthcare equity: Working in community medicine requires a comprehensive understanding of social justice issues, the history of mistreatment and prejudice, and how marginalized communities have been affected by the quality of healthcare in their communities. Working to remove barriers to fair treatment and equal opportunity to receive care often means grappling with the systems that created the disparities in the first place.
- Want to work in disease education and prevention: Education and prevention can both go a long way in improving the overall health of a community. As a community medicine professional, you’ll need to know what your community is aware of already and what they might need information on in order to meet their needs.
Keck Graduate Institute: Fully Asynchronous Master of Science in Community Medicine
At KGI, we’re taking steps to improve community access to healthcare by educating graduates to work directly within their communities to impact real change. That’s why we developed our Master of Science in Community Medicine degree. Our two-year community medicine degree is fully online and asynchronous, allowing students to complete their work at a time that works for them without pausing their careers.
Our degree prepares students to engage with their communities in focused, effective ways and to be part of a hands-on approach to removing disparities in healthcare.
Want to learn more about careers you can pursue with a Master of Science in Community Medicine? Download our eBook, There’s More to Science Than Meets the Eye: Your Guide to Careers in Healthcare and Applied Life Sciences.
In our guide, you’ll learn all about the degrees you need to get you to your dream job. You’ll also discover how the different industries within STEM, healthcare, and the life sciences interact with and impact each other.
Don’t miss out on this valuable resource!
Want to know more about KGI? Request more information or or apply to KGI today!
