What can health care providers do?
Health care providers have the responsibility of seeing that health issues like infant mortality are under control. For Latinos, the attempts by health care providers to reduce infant mortality should be advanced from a cultural, socio and economic basis to be a success. This can be done in the following ways:
The health care providers can provide easier access to primary health care for women of in their childbearing ages. This can be done by removing barriers to access of health care through reduced costs and providing Latinas with good and affordable medical benefits and insurance packages that offer pre and post natal treatment. ˇ°Research indicates that women who are fully insured are more likely to have a regular source of care and more likely to get preconception care and early, ongoing prenatal careˇ± (Minnesota Department of Health). With affordable medical services, infant mortality will definitely reduce among the Latinas.
Developing programs that work closely with and support pregnant and parenting teens while educating them about good health behaviors and pregnancy is another thing health care providers can do. In doing so, infant deaths related with teen pregnancy problems like low birth weight, maternal complications and so on will be decreased.
The health care providers can also recruit Latinos in the health care system so that people can be served by people of their own culture. Such people could include Latinos and people that understand, know and respect the Latino culture and tradition. Because culture is an important aspect for Latinos, this could most likely eliminate the bias and grounds for discrimination while increasing the medical utilization of Latinas. This will hence forth lead to increasing pre and post natal medical visits for Latino mothers.
