Covid-19 served as an exposé on the inequities in our healthcare system. Indeed, during the peak of the pandemic, black Americans died nearly twice the rate of white Americans from the pandemic causing virus [1]. The pandemic was a tragedy for all Americans — there’s no doubt about that, and examining death rates by race may seem in bad taste. But, according to Erika Stallings, prominent attorney and writer, Covid-19 exposed another “double pandemic” — namely, health inequties in the United States. It’s difficult to overlook the fact that, according to the Harvard Public Health Review, black Americans are more likely to face major causes of death, but their access to healthcare is “worse by both measures” [2].
How does this all play out? Well, a 2012 study found that racial disparities in healthcare accounted for nearly 83,750 deaths each year [3]. This is absolutely unacceptable for a healthcare system, and policies should be put into place to mitigate deaths based solely off the color of one’s skin. Overall, Dayna Bowen Matthew, in her book “Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care”, deftly summarized by author Adam Gafney, argues:
“Health inequality started with the nation’s birth…This history is well known: the commodification of black bodies through slave labor bled the health and longevity of these men and women. And even after the abolition of slavery, an amalgam of racist terrorism, social segregation, economic marginalization, and political exclusion carried these health inequalities forward well into the 20th century — indeed, into the present day” [4].
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22643550/
