Research Shows US Has Made Scant Progress in Closing Racial Health Disparities
KFF Health News
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The U.S. health care system, “by its very design, delivers different outcomes for different populations,” said a June report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Those racial and ethnic inequities “also contribute to millions of premature deaths, resulting in loss of years of life and economic productivity.”?
Tenants living in derelict housing face conditions that contribute to higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, asthma, violence, and other life-threatening risks.?
The federal government has a long history of discriminatory practices in public housing. In cities across the country after World War II, Black families were barred from many public housing complexes even as the government induced white people to leave them by offering single-family homes in the suburbs subsidized by the Federal Housing Administration.?
Medical schools around the country are trying to recruit Black, Hispanic, and Native American students, all of whom remain disproportionately underrepresented in the field of medicine. Research has shown that patients of color prefer seeing doctors of their own race — and some studies have shown health outcomes are better for Black patients seeing Black doctors.?
But a recent swell of Republican opposition threatens to upend those efforts, school administrators say, and could exacerbate deep health disparities already experienced by people of color.?
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Too often land inhabited by Black and Hispanic people is unfairly overburdened with air pollution and other emissions from trash incinerators, chemical plants, and oil refineries that harm their health, said Mike Ewall, director of Energy Justice Network, a nonprofit that advocates for clean energy and maps municipal solid waste incinerators.?
Incinerators emit pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and fine particulate matter, which have been associated with heart disease, respiratory problems, and cancer.?
Black people make up 13.7% of the overall U.S. population yet account for 32.2% of the nation’s homeless population. Vulnerability questionnaires were created to determine how likely a person is to get sick and die while homeless, and the system has been adopted widely around the country over the past decade to help prioritize who gets housing. The more a homeless person is perceived to be vulnerable, the more points they score on the questionnaire and the higher they move in the housing queue. The surveys are being singled out for worsening racial disparities by systematically placing homeless white people at the front of the line, ahead of their Black peers.?
Read more from KFF Health News’ investigative series Systemic Sickness.?
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Retired, Grandfather
1 个月The article begins by suggesting that Black Americans have recently begun to experience higher mortality rates compared to white people. This is NOT a recent occurrence. This has always been happening. White women have a life expectancy about 10 years greater than Black men. Black women are 2.6 times more likely to die during pregnancy and delivery than white women. The healthcare industrial complex has never treated the races equally. Very very sad ??