I enjoyed listening to Mr. Alvarez, the executive director of Austin Community Advancement Network, share the highlights of the work that this group does. This Network increases awareness provides the community with alerts of problems that needs more attention. I found that the presentation provided super important information about the “Equity Analysis” section, especially the “Are we healthy?” section. This section he discussed is about diabetes, cardiovascular disease, smoking, and obesity rates between blacks, Hispanics, whites, and others from 2011-2014. The results surprised me because blacks showed the highest in every single category. Another fact I picked up, is that Hispanics are the least likely to have health insurance, which makes it even harder to stay healthy. This relates to wicked problems and the community because it might not ever be fixed and if it does, it will take time. Blacks, need to start taking better care of themselves because people in our community need to be healthier. Because Hispanics lack health insurance, it is critical that people in the community try to come up with solutions to solve this wicked problem. It is imperative that we explore local wicked problems like this one so we can better out community and make it a better place for everyone to live. Learning about these situation, I realized that it helps us learn more about ourselves and our world which provides everyone with more knowledge helping us figure out what we can do to help.
It is interesting that certain groups have more health issues. What do you think are some possible reasons for this?