Global Racial, Ethnic, and Religious Subculture and Its Impact on Healthcare Organizations

Introduction

This chapter deals with the racial, ethnic and religious subculture and its impact on the global health care organizations and their practices. This study is exploratory in nature where a variety of sources covering different disciplines and approaches have been analyzed to find out the answers of the following questions-

• 1.

  How ethnic and racial subculture put a negative effect on global health practices?

• 2.

  What are ethnic and racial differences in healthcare practices of developed and developing countries/ societies?

• 3.

  Why, how and where diseases discriminate among races and ethnicity?

• 4.

  What are positive innovative practices adopted globally to handle ethnic and racial issues in health care industries?

• 5.

  What is the historical perspective of health care industry based on Religion?

• 6.

  What are the religious taboos in treatment of diseases?

• 7.

  What is required by health care industry to handle religious sensitivities?

• 8.

  What is the role of spirituality in health care?

• 9.

  What are the positive impacts of religion on health care?

A discussion-based approach has been used to compare and contrast various information regarding health care practice and role of ethnicity and religion in affecting it. Results show that, some races have poor health as compared to others because of multiple reasons. Major reasons are socio-economic and biological (or genetic) in nature. Some of the poor health practices prevalent among major races dwelling across the globe have been tabulated in the chapter. Race based differences in health care system can be observed on the bases of developed and developing societies. Developed countries have more lifestyle-based diseases while developing societies suffer from lifestyle as well as vector born diseases. It has been found that diseases discriminate among races where some races are more prone to certain disease; details are tabulated in the chapter. It has been observer that health institutions across the world intentionally or unintentionally practice racism. However, some healthcare institutes and public health organizations are using innovative and technology driven practices to fight against racism. Diversification in staff ethnicity and race along with their social mobility are useful techniques which has reduced racism in hospital settings. Chapter provides examples and cases where innovative practices improved the behavior of staff towards patients. In many tribes and religion certain diseases are considered as taboo and treated with the help of traditional practices. Spiritual and religious practices have played an important role in the treatment of the psychological and mental illness. Much evidence is presented in research to support the role of spirituality and religion in the patient care and recovery from the diseases. However some studies do not support that religion and spirituality plays an important role in reducing human health related problems. Some studies don’t even find any correlation in health care and religion. Health care seems to be affected by race, ethnicity and religion but there is a huge scope of quantitative analysis to get a detailed and comprehensive result. Study needs to be conducted across the world based upon primary data where it could compare various culture, sub-culture, ethnicity, races and religion and its impact on healthcare industry and patients.