University:
Borough of Manhattan Community College
Course:
SOC 100 | Introduction To Sociology
Academic year:

2024
Views:

422

Pages:

2
Author:

Claudia T.

Racial Disparities in Buprenorphine Access Joe Biden signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 which means qualified providers can prescribe Buprenorphine. Buprenorphine is one of the very few medications that is used to treat opioid use disorder. With that being said, it should be noted that drug overdose has increased drastically over time, with some of the most prominent increases being within the last decade with synthetic opioids. Additionally, with each wave of drug overdose, the magnitude of the burden has not been distributed uniformly across races. BIPOC communities has received the majority of the burden of overdose deaths, followed by non-Hispanic Blacks, and then White people. However, Buprenorphine has been proven to help with opioid usage and increase treatment retention. Despite this help, buprenorphine is subject to racial disparity, as the racial minority communities fail to receive this medication to the same extent as White people. For instance, Black patients fail to receive this medication due to racial discrimination in healthcare. Addiction psychiatrists are predominantly White and subject BIPOC and Hispanic communities to racism. Additionally, even with commercial insurance, Black and Hispanic patients are still less likely to receive this medication than White patients. The Affordable Care Act has helped with access in other opioid usage medication, but buprenorphine has still remained inaccessible by minority groups. This lack of distribution to Black and Hispanic communities furthers the overdose burden to these racial groups and prohibits any improvement in opioid usage, which furthers stigma and racism. Additionally, this current event relates to the topic of race in healthcare as it shows that race can play a crucial role in receiving quality care. In this case, White people are significantly more likely to receive Buprenorphine simply based off their race, while Black and Hispanic patients are not. Moreover, the idea of race in healthcare feeds into structural racism leading to racial disparities within health care. - - Bu pro ne phorine is one of the few meds thats used to treat opioid use disordder Joe biden signed an act that allowes providers to prescribe it to increase access of this medication The last decade there has been a big wave of drug overdose especially with synthetic opioids and this overdose burden hasnt been recieved equally within all the races bc the Black and Hispanic community has the most amounts OD deaths So since bu pro ne phorine was supposed to increase in access the opposite happened a lot of black and hispanic patients recieved to fail this emdication due racial discrimination as most the addiction physicians and psychiatrists are white and they were racially biased when prescribing the medication - Even black and hispanic patients with commerical insurance still failed to recieve this medication the same amount yt ppl recieved it This relates to the topic of race in healthcare because like i just said, race does play a factor in the quality of treatment patiets recieve