11.9.3: Discussion Questions and Writing Prompts

Chapter 9 Discussion Questions and Writing Prompts

Prompts for discussion and writing assignments are included to spur collective inquiry, reflection, and engagement with the chapter’s materials. You are encouraged to use these for class sessions, assignments, reflective studying, and more.

1. The perspectives of Institutional Health Care and Traditional Health Care have often been at odds, because Institutional Health developed out of a context that systematically targets Indigenous people and Latinx communities. Given the history of mistrust between Chicanx and Latinx communities, what are some strategies that healthcare providers can use to build strong relationships?
2. The COVID-19 pandemic brought to the forefront of public attention a number of long term issues in healthcare access, like language barriers and disparities in health insurance. During the time of the pandemic, government officials funded public health programs to provide community education, testing, vaccines, and treatment at free or low-cost to all people. What other health issues would benefit from this type of approach? How would this look similar or different to the response to COVID-19?
3. There are shared patterns of environmental health disparities across different communities, including by race, immigration status, and socio-economic status. However, in practice, environmental health concerns are always influenced by dynamics at the local level that shape one’s relationship to their broader surroundings. In a short essay, identify one major factor that contributes to positive health and one major factor that contributes to negative heath in your local community. Then, analyze who has the most direct access to their factors. 
4. Mental health affects communities in disparate ways, and it can be affected by a number of social, cultural, and environmental factors. In your essay, identify a specific aspect of mental health (such as healthy relationships, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, self-esteem, or another related topic) and analyze how multiple factors may affect Latinx or Chicanx communities with respect to this aspect of mental health. You are encouraged to use an intersectional framework that emphasizes how identities such as gender, sexuality, immigration status, and more would be relevant to mental health. To ground your analysis in evidence-based research, you may want to locate research sources for this topic. 

Supplemental Resources

To help generate ideas and creative thinking about your own local context, you may want to explore the listed sources:

• Citizen scientists, Latino residents to track air quality in East Las Vegas - Nevada Current 
• Latinos often lack access to healthcare and have poor health outcomes. Here’s how we can change that - Brookings Institute
• Hispanic Federation: Healthy Parks: Healthy Latinos 
• Physical Activity in Latino Communities - National Academy of Medicine
• Latino Health Disparities - League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)
• Disparities in the Impact of Air Pollution | American Lung Association - American Lung Association
• Immigrant Trauma and Mental Health Outcomes Among Latino Youth - PMC
• Mental Health Needs of an Emerging Latino Community | SpringerLink
• Latino Adults’ Access to Mental Health Care - PMC
• PTSD Treatment-Seeking Among Rural Latino Combat Veterans: A Review of the Literature - PMC
• PTSD in Latino Patients: Illness Beliefs, Treatment Preferences, and Implications for Care
• Predicting Adolescent Self-Esteem From Participation in School Sports Among Latino Subgroups - PMC