Systemic Racism in Healthcare continues to Kill: 20 Years Later
“Racial and ethnic minorities experience a lower quality of health services, and are less likely to receive even routine medical procedures than are white Americans.”
Those words might have been written recently, amid a pandemic that has disproportionately sickened and killed people of color. In fact, they were written two decades ago.
(https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/23/landmark-report-systemic-racism-medicine-so-little-has-changed/)
Today, amongst news about Abbott here in Texas claiming parents and doctors seeking any kind of trans care for trans kids should be treated as child abuse our attention was caught by an article discussing a disturbing study from 2002, a study that clearly stated racism was rampant in the American medical and health are systems…
and things are even worse now, 20 years later.
“And why has there not been more work, legislation, and progress when the issues laid bare by Covid — poorer care and higher death rates for people of color — were established so clearly and with such precision two decades ago? Why were so few of the report’s 21 detailed recommendations put into place?”
The reasons they point to are myriad: Our national discomfort with confronting the long-taboo topic of race remains a roadblock, as does widespread denial among health care providers that they may be part of the problem. Other issues include complacency; a lack of consistent political will to eliminate inequities; health disparities work being elbowed out of the way when other priorities arise; a fragmented health care system that isn’t amenable to universal solutions; and a dearth of quality racial and ethnic data needed to track whether efforts to end disparities are working.
The truth is, we know what to o, but most are not willing to do it. To examine their own biases and fears. To sacrifice their privilege to support others. To change an entire system that is not really a system because a system supports all parts. This system was made to protect the white and wealthy and it does just that, as Covid has shown.
Will 20 more years go by without change? Will we even be on this planet to see it? The precious, brilliant life that is lost so unnecessarily is devastating.
“That grim truth has been made startlingly clear by both the pandemic and by statistics that show Black Americans continue to die up to five years earlier than those who are white.”
Perhaps the resurgence of this study in light of the pandemic and all the attempts to squash CRT will clarify how desperately change is needed.
We continue to remain dedicated to education. Racism is a fact. and it is a fact in the medical world as much as in policing, real estate and schools.
“Despite steady improvement in the overall health of the U.S. population, racial and ethnic minorities, with few exceptions, experience higher rates of morbidity and mortality than non-minorities,” the report said, calling the worse medical outcomes “unacceptable.”
Unacceptable.
What do you think of this article?
