POLICY AREAS

Health Equity and Social Determinants

Health Equity and Social Determinants
  1. Toxic living conditions and environmental racism helped inflate death rates among African Americans before COVID-19 struck.
  2. The coronavirus is hitting Blacks and other people of color harder than whites. A recent July 2020 New York Times report found African-Americans and Latinos are three times as likely to become infected as their white neighbors and nearly twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white people.
  3. A report by APM Research Lab, The Color of Coronavirus: COVID-19 Deaths by Race and Ethnicity in the U.S., found counties with higher black populations account for over half of all COVID-19 cases and almost 60 percent of deaths.
  4. A Pew survey found 61 percent of Hispanics and 44 percent of Black-Americans households were laid off or had their wages cut last month, compared to 38 percent of whites.
  5. Black American workers are often disproportionately found in industries and occupations that face the greatest risks of known occupational hazards. The same seems to be the case with Covid-19.
  6. A study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition using testers found Black business owners had a harder time getting federal aid under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) when compared to their white counterparts.
  7. Early reports found 90 percent of minority and women-owned businesses were frozen out of the COVID-19 relief loans passed by Congress, with SBA and big banks bypassing the most vulnerable minority businesses in favor of bigger “small” businesses.    
  8. FEMA issued new guidance and public messaging for local and state officials to use during 2020 disasters (FEMA, "COVID-19 Pandemic Operational Guide for the 2020 Hurricane Season.
  9. Racism places a “hidden tax” on being black in America. Black college graduates home ownership rate is lower than white high school dropouts’ homeownership rate of 60.5 percent.
  10. Black wealth is roughly one tenth of white wealth.
  11. The average Black household has a net worth $800,000 lower than the average white household.
  12. Racial bias in black neighborhoods on average costs black homeowners an average of $48,000 per home on average, amounting to $156 billion in cumulative losses.
  13. Government response to large national disasters ends up with white communities gaining an average of $126,000 in wealth following recovery efforts—while black and other communities of color lose between $10,000 and $29,000.
  14. COVID-19 is exacerbating political disenfranchisement and racial health inequities.
  15. African Americans are almost three times more likely than whites to die from asthma related causes.
  16. Black children are 4 times more likely to be admitted to the hospital for asthma, as compared to non-Hispanic white children.
  17. African American children have an asthma death rate ten times that of non-Hispanic white children.
  18. Income inequality is especially problematic for the Deep South which has the worst chance of its residents going from the bottom income level to the top.
  19. Eleven of the 20 states with the highest income inequality are in the South.
  20. In 2016, the median wealth for black and Hispanic families was $17,600 (10%) and $20,700 (12%) respectively, compared with white families’ median wealth of $171,000.
  21. Black Americans are exposed to 1.54 times more fine particulate matter than whites.
  22. Blacks are exposed to 56 percent  more pollution than caused by their consumption.
  23. Whites enjoy a "pollution advantage," meaning they breathe  17 percent less air pollution than they cause.
  24. Blacks are 79% more likely than whites to live where industrial pollution poses the greatest health danger.
  25. Blacks in 19 states are more than twice as likely as whites to live in neighborhoods with high pollution levels.
  26. Black households with incomes between $50,000 and $60,000 live in neighborhoods that are more polluted than the average neighborhood in which white households with incomes below $10,000 live.
  27. University of Minnesota researchers found people of color breathe 38% more polluted air than whites.
  28. Children in schools located in high-traffic environments had a 45 percent increased risk of developing asthma.
  29. Persons living in areas with high levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) were 15 percent more likely to die from the coronavirus than someone in a region with one unit less of the fine particulate pollution.
  30. Air pollution still causes 200,000 early deaths each year.
  31. A 2017 Harvard University study found Black Americans are nearly three times more likely to die from exposure to airborne pollutants than other Americans.
  32. Reducing current levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) by just one microgram per cubic meter of air would save about 12,000 lives every year, the scientists found.
  33. By 2030, EPA air quality emissions standards for vehicles are projected to annually prevent 40,000 premature deaths, 34,000 avoided hospitalizations, and 4.8 million work days lost.
  34. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) preliminary data revealed 45 percent of COVID-19 deaths were white, 33 percent were black, and 8 percent were Hispanic—although African Americans make up just 13 percent of the U.S. population
  35. An independent analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation found 27 percent for African Americans compared to 21 percent for whites were at higher risk of serious illness if infected with COVID-19.
  36. African American COVID-19 patients are nearly three times more likely than whites to be hospitalized.
  37. The disproportionately higher rates of infection, hospitalization and deaths are linked to lingering and persistent health, social, economic, and environmental inequities facing black Americans—conditions rooted in oppression, discrimination, medical apartheid, and structural racism.
  38. COVID-19 exposes the racial divide in our nation’s nursing homes and prisons which have a high proportion of African Americans.
  39. A recent Pew survey found 61 percent of Hispanics and 44 percent of African-Americans households were laid off or had their wages cut last month, compared to 38 percent of whites.
  40. African American workers are often disproportionately found in industries and occupations that face the greatest risks of known occupational hazards.
  41. During Covid-19, African Americans are also less likely to be in jobs where they can work telework from home.
  42. African Americans have the highest death rate and lowest survival rate of any racial or ethnic group for most cancers.  Among men, the overall cancer death rate was 47 percent higher for blacks than for whites.
  43. African American adults are 60 percent more likely than non-Hispanic white adults to have been diagnosed with diabetes by a physician and twice as likely as non-Hispanic whites to die from diabetes.
  44. Black adults are up to two times more likely to develop high blood pressure by age 55 compared to whites.
  45. African Americans suffer from kidney failure at a rate more than three times higher than whites. African Americans constitute more than 35 percent of all patients in the U.S. receiving dialysis for kidney failure, but only represent 13.2 percent of the overall U.S. population.
  46. African Americans are 3 times more likely to suffer from sarcoidosis than white Americans. This lung-scarring disease is 16 times more deadly for blacks than for whites.
  47. Over 11.5 percent of blacks and 19.0 percent of Hispanics compared to 7.5 percent of whites are uninsured.