Covid-19: Why race matters for health

The pandemic has highlighted the complex links between inequality, racism and disease risk in America. Harvard public health scholar David Williams explains.
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The coronavirus pandemic has affected everyone, but in the United States, communities of color have recorded a disproportionate number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths. In this video, Harvard’s David Williams, a renowned scholar of the link between racial discrimination and health, explains why decades of inequality have left populations of Black, Latinx, Native American and others more vulnerable to Covid-19.
“Although all Americans are in the same storm - we are in the same pandemic - but we are not in the same boats,” Williams says. “Those boats that have wealth, you are better able to navigate the storm. You’re better able to protect yourself … than those [in] very fragile boats - households that have no wealth.”
Williams discusses how stress - be it economic, psychosocial, environmental or caused by facing racism - increases the risk of conditions such as high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes, all of which are associated with worse outcomes in Covid-19.
“Persons who report high levels of everyday discrimination are more likely to get diabetes. They’re more likely to develop high blood pressure. They’re more likely to become obese. So across a broad range of indicators…, we find that stress in general and discrimination [in particular] leads to poorer health,” Williams says.
The solutions, he says, lie in recognizing the problem we are facing, and working to bridge what he calls the “empathy gap” that’s enabled health disparities to persist for so long. “The biggest challenge that we have is the fact that, to put it bluntly, we don’t care enough about the populations of color that are suffering this disproportionate burden.”
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Thumbnail art: Eric Millikin

[@nessahernandez1480]

Thank you for all this information ℹ️

[@mattmccullough1093]

Race don't matter because we're all the same race the human race just different colors and that is all.

[@cghrios783]

We as people need to have principles and morals and inculcate in our kids to work hard to study hard to get out of vicious cycle. To keep from having a family until we are old enough and stable to support a family. But nowadays I see little kids having kids , drinking, smoking, getting high. There’s no morals anymore. Stay healthy, exercise (even a brisk walk a day), stop eating fast food. It’s cheaper in the long run and healthier for us. We have to be responsible human beings. But we aren’t and it’s not about race it’s about morales and principles.