What a time to be alive, public health friends.
Public health is an often overlooked field and even the definition alludes many. What is public health?
And how could something no one knows about even matter?
I like to define public health as a marriage between a person and their healthcare. There is a lot of science and facts that go behind treating a person, but what about everything else? Public health seeks to answer the questions of who, what, where, when, and why in relation to a person or community's health. Who is represented, what do they need, where do they live, when will they be taken care of, and why does any of this matter. Public health broadly defined focuses on prevention of damage to the health of populations rather than individuals.
So what does COVID-19 expose exactly? We are in what many are calling an unprecedented time in our world history relating to epidemiology. But some of the effects of this virus aren't as novel.
We have always had health disparities, especially in this country. Health disparities are the difference in health care outcomes based on socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, nationality, etc. They are the differences in how likely one is to live or die based on things that shouldn't affect their ability to live or die. It's upsetting and sickening and it happens every single day. COVID-19 has only highlighted these things in our society, not created them.
According to data reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 33% of hospitalized patients were black in a study done while they represented 18% of the community. To compare, 45% of individuals who were white were hospitalized and they represented 55% of the community. The amount of black patients is disproportionate to their representation in the surrounding community (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/racial-ethnic-minorities.html).
And this isn't because black people are more susceptible to the virus.
This is due to the already pre-existing health disparities in black communities across the country. Disparities that were caused by racist policies, zoning laws, things done to keep Black Americans from having the same shot at life as White Americans. Historically and even today, Black Americans are pushed further and further away from resources that will be good for their health because their very existence lowers property value.
I want you to think about that for a minute.
Phenomena like white flight and gentrification occur because property value, an idea made by White landowning Americans that deemed the presence of black people, who are poorer because of systemic racism, as undesirable to white Americans who are richer, due to systemic racism and gives them the ability to then push Black Americans in areas where they don't have much as economic, educational, or social opportunity.
THEN they are blamed for their living conditions and told they need to "help themselves". Black Americans are left with few options and those options they were forced to create for themselves are over-policed compared to their white counterparts.
The goal of segregation was never separate but equal. Remember that.
Racism in this country is as much of an epidemic as COVID-19. And it won't go away with a vaccine.
Photo from benjerry.com
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