Depth in your response when dis/agreeing or acknowledging each post below. Depth in response, providing new information, AND analyzing post below in a way that extends meaningful discussions by integrating multiple posts, and offering alternative perspectives.

post 1:

1a. Coming from a working middle class area I would say that most of what I have seen read and heard is quite similar to the topics discussed in these videos. We as children definitely heard that the wealthier people had better healthcare than we did, and could afford whatever we needed, but I know for sure when my dad needed to have the cancerous spot cut out of his arm that it cost us an “arm and a leg” and my parents constantly fought about money and struggled to get by just to make sure we had whatever we needed. There are many plants in Louisiana and they obviously are all mostly in lower socioeconomic communities. Now that I am older and am around different more diverse groups of people I have noticed the overall better health in immigrants than in American born people, even down to people skin and the way they age, white people tend to age very poorly as far as wrinkles and such go but I have seen many many Hispanics age very well and I frequently hear the saying “black don’t crack” because Africans also tend to age better then whites here in America.

1b. Some of the differences I noticed were not necessarily differences but just things I had never heard, I do A LOT of birth related research but as a white American I have never stumbled upon or taken the initiative to search for facts about the prevalence of prematurity in black Americans. In general I find that entire topic to be very interesting.

2a. I think the videos definitely confirmed a lot of the ideas I held, personally I think that the government subtly controls a lot of things around us that they do not want us to realize such as the fact that chemical plants are placed near low income or “expendable” neighborhoods.

2b. I would not say the videos challenged much for me, if anything they opened up some interesting topics for me to do some further reading and researching but I tend to think I’m mostly open minded about many things therefore, not much truly challenges me.

3. I truly found it very surprising and disturbing how African American babies have such high prevalence for prematurity potentially based on stress. It is very sad to me that babies ever have to suffer because I just have a soft spot for babies but it is even worse that it may be because of something that should not even exist. It is so frustrating to me that we continue to pass down such cruelties to generations which is just leading to the repetition of a cycle such as the one you can see here. I am growing my third child now and as I sit here and think about it most of the babies in the NICU when I was there with my second were black. It is also sad because no matter how readily available or highly publicized this information were to become you just can not force people to change, there is no easy fix to the problem.

4. Watching the older white woman talk about how she eats one meal a day toward the end of the week so that she can make sure her boys have everything they need was very sad for me. As a mother I know that I would do ANYTHING for my children and can only imagine what it feels like to have to make those choices, I hope to never have to.

5a. I truly would like to know more about the research done on reasons for higher prematurity rates in African American babies.

5b. Many contributing factors were listed in regards to prevalence of prematurity in African Americans including racism. Some other factors are socioeconomic status, stress, and ethnic differences in stress related neuroendocrine, vascular, and immunological processes. This is interesting because it suggest that not only is stress a contributing factor but ways our bodies deal with stress may actually be completely different. The articles I found still say that not enough research has been conducted to develop a good conclusion. The CDC says a major factor in pre-term birth is lack of knowledge of what causes pre-term birth to be more prevalent but they do not seem to really develop much of an opinon.

post 2:

1a. Unnatural causation of inequalities in public health is similar in that it encompasses similar groups (i.e. lower socioeconomic classes, immigrants, people of color), that natural causes of equality do.

1b. The phenomena of unnatural causes differs from other modalities of inequities and disparities in that it is more subtle and insidious than; let’s say, an outbreak of influenza in a city.

2a. My ideations of inequalities in healthcare, whether this be accessibility, portability, affordability, or any other “ility”, has been confirmed by the process of unnatural causes.

2b. I would say that my preconceived volatility of unnatural causes has been challenged; in that, I did not anticipate unnatural causes had such a profound influence on inequalities and disparities.

3. Statistics speak profoundly, and while statistics themselves are not the whole picture, they do assist in providing a depiction of the general milieu.  In this case, the statistic portraying that per 1,000 births 10 infant mortalities exist for black females that have a college education comparatively to the 9 per 1,000 births of white females that did not complete high school, was extremely illuminative and disconcerting.

4. The section of the clip that resonated most with me was the dichotomy that was displayed between the affluent white male and people of color struggling for survival.  From my observations, many individuals still deem the United States a meritocracy, when in reality, it appears we live in a land of political sway, family establishments, and serendipity.  In essence, hard work coupled with determination does not necessarily equate to a higher standard of living.

5a. The all-encompassing question that arose for me was, what do we do with this information and how do we implement change?

5b.

A common thematic discussion to implement change is to simply implement information; that is, the media needs to publish information, and the manner of depicting social determinants of health needs to be addressed to the general public.  Indeed, medical doctor Howard Koh, an esteemed doctor in his field, indicated that the ideology of social determinants of health has become more of an academia discussion than a general one (Koh, 2011).  Also, when researchers published their findings in the American Journal of Public Health, their results portrayed that 69.6% of articles mentioned no solution to health inequalities and disparities (Annice et al., 2010).  Disseminating information that is comprehensible, educative, and easily accessible is a crucial step in ameliorating the issue of unnatural causes.