Tag Archive for: Health Policy Activity Guide

How Can We Make Resources Accessible to Everyone?

How Can We Make Resources Accessible to Everyone? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Judith Flores of the National Hispanic Medical Association discusses barriers to care and ways to overcome them.

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Transcript

Sasha Tanori:

What specific barriers to care have you noticed that stand out to you?   

Judith Flores:

I’ve been doing quite a lot of work with communities and populations in New York City for over many years, and it’s always the very same thing we look at. We always think in terms of finances, can someone have coverage to access care? But to be honest, once you do have coverage, a lot of the other things have to do with what’s available to you, what is in your preferred language, what speaks to you and to your community.   

Sasha Tanori:

All right, thank you. Why aren’t all resources accessible to everyone, and how can we change that?   

Judith Flores:

I think that’s a very, very important question for us, and it’s a question for us to look at in this country as we evolve health care. We’ve always had a financial barrier in this country. The opportunities are very uneven across the states, and that produces a lot of unequity or disequity from person to person and group to group, even within states, people that may not have access because they don’t know that they are eligible for certain resources due to perhaps language barriers or culturally incompetent practices.