Dorothy Bird Nyswanders: An Open Society

The purpose of this paper is to do further reflections on the topic of an open society. For the purpose of the assignment, an article “The Open Society: Its Implication for Health Educators” from Dorothy Bird Nyswander has been reviewed. The United State is a multicultural country. We have people with varieties of race, culture, background and ethnicity living together. And, the question of how to create an environment that gave everyone equal chances in the society seems to be an endless debate. Disparity in the society is one the biggest issue that people discussed the most. People are treated differently because of their race or ethnicity. Therefore, they do not have the equal opportunities in terms of education, health care, housing, job, …show more content…
Notion of the present of privilege is important (Pinn, 2015). Many people believed that privilege is not existing in today’s America, and it is all about the past. However, the history of America has a huge impact to our society. It is undoubtable that whiteness privilege is one of things that given by the history, and it is existing in today’s life. For example, people will be treated differently because of the color of skin. Therefore, notion of the privilege will help people to think about the issue, and do further actions to minimize the impacts it done on our society. Another example that we should encourage is to get oneself educated (Pinn, 2015). Cultural diversity, racism, discrimination and disparity are some complex concepts. There are plenty of information related to these terms. Therefore, it is feasible for people to read more information regarding to the issue. There are many ways for people to enhance the knowledge related to these topics. Schools, books, professional associations and newspapers are the examples. For example, people can read books to understand others’ cultural beliefs. Therefore, they are able to communicate with people in a proper way to avoid conflicts. Overall, the aim of these behaviors is to increase understanding of the present of diversity, and decrease conflicts. Therefore, people may consider these behaviors in the hopes of …show more content…
The status of health can be determined by some social factors. The examples are level of education, incomes, socioeconomic states(SES), access to health care services and government policies, etc. Furthermore, people with a higher SES tend to live longer. Health refers to ones’ physical and mental statuses, and we usually connect health with medicine. However, data showed that modern development of medicine only contribute one-sixth of times of life expectancy gained in America. Therefore, it showed us that there are other factors that helped people to improve health status (Mann, 1998). As mentioned above, a higher SES is able to let a person to live longer. Therefore, the factors contributed to SES seem to be the answer. Level of education, incomes and occupation are some determents for SES. In order to develop a high SES, people need to have human rights. As human rights allow people to get education, develop a sound health care system, access to health care services when they wanted and even as simple as get some clean foods, etc. Therefore, provide human rights to people can surely increase their health statuses. There is a study supported this claim, and it is related to HIV prevention on women in Cairo (Mann, 1998). At first, they followed the traditional way. They provided counseling, condom distribution, basic clinical services, etc. However, it was not enough to the change the situation because the patients did not