COVID-19 has disproportionately infected and killed people of
color, causing many health care leaders to renew their focus on racism’s role
in social determinants of health (SDOH). Since George Floyd was killed by
Minneapolis police and Black Lives Matter protests took over America's streets,
the conversation about racism in health care has become even more urgent.
A June 16 Brookings Institution analysis of data through June 6
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that "the
age-adjusted COVID-19 death rate for Black people is 3.6 times that for whites,
and the age-adjusted death rate for Hispanic/Latino people is 2.5 times that
for whites."
According to Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), spotty health
insurance coverage is partly to blame for bad COVID-19 outcomes for people of
color. "These racial gaps…reflect a deeply entrenched racial inequity
throughout our health care system, and one of the key drivers of these
disparities is unequal access to care. The uninsured rate for African Americans
is more than 1.6 times higher than the uninsured rate for white
Americans," she said during a June 22 meeting of the House Committee on
Education and Labor about the pandemic's impact on education, health care and
the workforce.
In a webinar organized by the Alliance for Health Policy, Adaeze
Enekwechi, president of health care consultancy IMPAQ International, said
expanding coverage is a critical part of improving health outcomes in
communities of color going forward. "Whether it's through Medicaid or some
of the other policy discussion points around Medicare, but I think we need to
think long and hard about that," she said.
Wizdom Powell, director of the Health Disparities Institute at
the University of Connecticut, argued that recent mass layoffs and furloughs
showed the need to improve coverage continuity and portability in general. She
observed people of color are more likely than the population at large to be
unemployed or work in industries that do not typically offer health care
coverage.
During a panel at the recent AHIP Institute & Expo, Kaiser
Permanente Executive Director for Strategic Customer Engagement, Product
Innovation and Evaluation Jennifer Christian-Herman observed that an
intentional focus on SDOH by employers and contracting plans can drive business
value.
CVS Health Corp. executive Garth Graham, M.D., agreed and said
that many forward-thinking plans are already working on improving housing,
nutrition and transportation for low-income members.
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