vulnerable population

Discussion Post: Vulnerable Population
Name
Institution

Discussion Post: Vulnerable Population
Vulnerable populations are individuals who are at high risk of getting unequal medical care to the rest of the people by social characteristics or financial circumstances such as socioeconomic or insurance status, disability, spirituality, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, race, and age. There exist significant disparities in vulnerable populations like access to healthcare, mortality, and morbidity despite efforts for the US to eliminate these disparities. The chosen vulnerable population for this discussion post is the people with disabilities.
In Florida, the US, a community organization that aids people with disability are the Florida Disability Access and Awareness Foundation. Its headquarter is in Gainesville city in Alachua County. It has partnered with the local community, community advocates, professional organizations, private providers and other state agencies to promote, protect and improve the health of the people with disabilities through the unified community, county and state efforts.
According to statistics revealed by the WHO (2018), the people that live with some form of disability are over a billion. Additionally, the number of individuals is also rising because of increased chronic health conditions and aging populations. The individuals with disabilities are part of the vulnerable population because the severity of their impairments brings a challenge of obtaining the required services.

A recent study found out that people with disabilities were more likely than the other population to report issues related to access to quality care (Baciu et al., 2017). Another study indicated that about 80% of the people with severe mental disorders in developing nations did not receive any treatment in the year before the survey (WHO, 2018). This vulnerable group has issues when using the healthcare system, for instance, difficulty in receiving treatment approvals which are costly and also the inability to access care from the healthcare providers with the expertise to treat their conditions. Additionally, most of the individuals with disabilities may face or fear undue stigma hence making it harder to receive appropriate care.
References
Baciu, A., Negussie, Y., Geller, & A., Weinstein, J. N. (2017). The State of Health Disparities in the United States. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
WHO. (2018). “Disability and health.” World Health Organization. Retreived from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health.