The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a glaring light on health care disparities—roadblocks or unequal treatment faced by individuals because of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, lack of health literacy, age, rural residency, or other factors.
Many people living with chronic pain have at some point felt dismissed by medical professionals—and for older individuals experiencing pain, their age often becomes an additional barrier when they seek out medical help. When older patients’ pain is overlooked because of their age, it can affect quality of life and even life expectancy.
In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service began a study on syphilis involving 600 Black men. Despite being promised medical care, these patients were kept in the dark about their disease while doctors studied its progression. In 1943, when penicillin started being used to treat syphilis, the men in the study did not receive it.
In the United States, 50 million individuals live with chronic pain—about 1 in 6 people. This metric, while staggering enough, only includes adults.
Visiting the doctor—for the first time or for yet another follow-up—can be overwhelming.
When a 36-year-old Latino man walks into a clinician’s office seeking help for pain, chances are good he will be asked about his pain level on a 1-10 scale.
Medical appointments that are not affirming of patients’ gender, name, and pronouns can be traumatic for individuals who are transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse.
There are many reasons that men may avoid going to the doctor. Whether it’s pride or machismo, finances, culture, or just wanting to avoid hearing “turn your head and cough,” men often put off these exams for too long.
The tie between physical pain and mental illness can feel like a never-ending and inseparable cycle, with pain causing or worsening mental health symptoms, and mental health issues provoking or exacerbating pain.
Ethleen Peacock was born in Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa, with sickle cell disease—a disorder in which red blood cells are misshapen and have difficulty moving through the body, causing intense pain episodes called “crises.”
By Mariah Leach
