Literature on health and social care

This chapter focuses on the literature on ethnicity/ race and ageing/ old age that brings attention to issues related to health and social care. Just as it was the case in the previous chapter, this chapter exposes the main trends observed as far as what characterises the literature in focus. Besides being research on the North American context and focusing on very few ethnic minorities, this chapter discusses the fact that this literature takes for granted that ethnicity and race matter for older people’s health and social care service utilisation but does not, in fact, answers why this is the case. In addition, this chapter problematizes the fact that by focusing almost exclusively on older ethnic minorities’ experiences, the literature fails to bring attention to the views of those whose practices are important to the issues being discussed (i.e. health and social care staff). Noted is also that few of the studies reviewed take into account the attitudinal and/or behavioural patterns that are implicitly conveyed to pose a challenge to older ethnic minorities’ access and usage of health and social care services. Thus, by bringing attention to the areas that have received attention (i.e. access and usage/ attitudes, preferences and experiences/ the suitability of different programs, interventions and services and self-care practices), this chapter identifies the array of areas that remain unexplored.