Reflection for Chapter 3

Chapter 3 entitled, " ", is a wealth of information regarding social work in the Primary Care Health field and what in entails. Esmeralda Stanfill is the author of the reflection for this chapter and will be referred to as such. Esmeralda found this chapter to be a road map or blueprint for how care is distributed, recognized and understood. She learned of the complexity of health, health care, prevention and how it varies for individuals, social status, communities and even a nation. Primary health care can not be accomplished solely by a health care provider. Many factors contribute to providing health care and the saying "it takes a village" comes to her mind when determining how to care for, educate, intervene, treat and promote health care for individuals as well as communities. While genetics can be a predictor of an individuals health, so does culture, socialeconomic status, social support, environment and the psyche of how one deals with all of these issues. Esmeralda learned that it is not only a health related issue and how to treat it benefits an individual but how and why it was caused and those factors are so important to understand so that intervention and health promotion can be determined in order to make changes to benefit others and future others. Social status not only effects the ability to pay for health care, it effects access to health care and resources and how it effects the individuals mentally and emotionally. These issues directly effect a persons health in the way of stress, vulnerability, self esteem and well being. One person or profession can not provide for all of these areas in a single individual therefore it is essential to collaborate with several disciplines in order to best serve the client. Esmeralda learned that social support and client empowerment are extremely valuable when treating a client. She realizes that the values we have as a nation directly effect our population and not necessarily in a positive way. The majority of the poor in our nation is women and children. (Cowles, A.L.F., 2013) they have no power politically so this effects the resources that are allocated for them. It's really a vicious cycle. Esmeralda was surprised to learn that Hispanic girls are twice as likely to attempt suicide as their white or black counterparts. She did however understand the reasons given such as strict parenting, overdependence on the daughter from the mother, differences from her parents culturally on where they were raised and reluctance for outside help from the parents. Esmeralda equates this chapter of information as having a bucket full of coins and dumping it into a change sorter. One knows what they have and how valuable it is and what they want to do with it. She sees a social worker as a coin sorting machine; seeing each coin as valuable and helping it get to its destination, brokering and coordinating the process, making sure each coin goes where it should and ultimately benefiting the client and bettering their lives. Ideally, they will have learned the benefit and save a little more next time and even better, teach their children what they learned.