- Project Summary: In no more than 200 words, provide a brief description of your project, including the key questions your project attempts to answer and a brief discussion of how you intend to answer those questions.
Due March 1
My project will focus on understanding healthcare disparities in relation to socioeconomic status and racial diversity in New York City. Poverty affects health in many ways, especially in accessing and maintaining quality medical care. For instance, residents of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods have higher mortality rates for many diseases as well as greater incidences of mental health problems and hospitalizations from alcohol and drug use. In relation to poverty, I will also examine race and its influence on health through discrimination, which not only contributes to greater psychological trauma and poor physical or mental health, but also limits access to the quantity and quality of health care resources, housing, and other necessities.
I will focus on investigating the structural reasons through the lens of neoliberalism, incarceration, and gentrification that contribute towards increased poverty rates in New York City. I will further understand the effect of poverty on healthcare disparities and disparities among racial and ethnic groups. I intend to answer these questions through a historical framework by providing a timescale of political changes that contributed to poverty. Other methods in understanding healthcare disparities based on socioeconomic status and racial diversity will be through statistical measures, records, and ethnographic studies.
Lopez’s comments:
Swapnika, you got a good start here. However, I’m worried that your approach is too broad. Maybe a good way to begin this is to contact the person you know in New York City in shares your ideas with them. Through this conversation they may be able to advise you on how to narrow down the skill of your approach. I think the structural reasons that you referred to, such as neoliberalism, will be helpful in situating your case study. However, you should think of these as the structural contexts that have intimate implications on existing and perpetuating healthcare disparities. Again, I suggest talking to your person in New York City and then maybe we could sit down and narrow down the focus of your study.