Skip to Main Content

8th Grade Design Thinking: Access to Health and Mental Health Care

Find resources based on the topics covered in the 8th grade Design Thinking session on Grade-Level Programs Day.

Facts about Access to Health and Mental Health Care

Healthcare disparities exist for several reasons:

  • Insufficient insurance coverage
    • 90.6% of Missourians have insurance; 565,099 Missourians are uninsured.
  • Healthcare staffing shortages
    • These gaps affect everyone, but particularly patients already in “healthcare deserts”.
  • Stigma and bias among the medical community
    • Stigma hampers access to care, affecting patients’ willingness and ability to seek specialized support such as mental healthcare services; even unintentional bias from clinicians and staff from outdated medical materials makes patients feel unwelcome and reluctant to return. 
  • Transportation and work-related barriers
    • These concerns are a key limit on patients’ ability to access preventive care and treatment; specific obstacles include an inability to travel into city centers or take the required time off.
  • Patient language barriers
    • 1 in 5 US households speaks a language other than English at home.
    • When patients and clinicians don’t speak the same language, it can impact the quality of care individuals receive, especially in hospital settings.

Explora

Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context

Sample Keywords

Try combining some of these phrases in your search:

  • Emotional Well-Being
  • Psychological Well-Being
  • Social Well-Being
  • Biological Factors of Mental Health
  • Physical Health
  • Cost of care
  • Patient outcomes

How to use a database

Databases can be a great place to find all sorts of information. They contain several different source types - books, reference book articles, magazine and newspaper articles, video, audio, statistics, and even recommended websites.

When you use a database you will probably need to narrow down your search to find results that are relevant to your topic. Here are some limiting tips:

  • Limit by date of publication - you are researching a current issue, so you probably don't want any materials that are more than 5-8 years old. 
  • Add search terms - the more terms in your search, the more focused your search will be. Leave out words like the, and, a, if, is, to, an and so. These terms will be omitted from your search anyway.
  • If you want to look up a particular topic or person of more than one word, use quotes to make the database do a phrase search. Ex. "John F. Kennedy", "Civil Rights Movement".
  • Limit by publication type or name (for example, look for articles from the New York Times).