Appalling disparities in health care have been revealed in several recent studies that the Covid 19 pandemic has magnified.
The ‘Center for American Progress (CAP)’ has pulled together research from across the USA showing that it is home to stark and persistent racial disparities in health coverage, chronic health conditions, mental health, and mortality.
The research claims that these disparities are not a result of individual or group behaviour but decades of systematic inequality in American economic, housing, and health care systems.
Persistent inequities have been identified facing African Americans or Black Americans, Hispanic Americans or Latino Americans, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander Americans, and American Indians or Alaska Natives.
The CAP believes that to meet the challenge of these health disparities will require a deliberate and sustained effort to address social determinants of health, such as poverty, segregation, environmental degradation, and racial discrimination.
Not Just the USA
In the UK Black and Asian people may be at greater risk of severe illness from Covid 19 because of social, cultural and biological reasons, experts have suggested.
Data on patients with confirmed Covid-19 from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC) shows that ethnic minorities are over-represented compared with the general population.
Studies also show people with South Asian backgrounds have a higher prevalence of diabetes and heart disease, which are two of the health conditions that puts people in the higher risk categories for Covid-19.
Advocacy Action: What policies are in place to ensure people from minority groups have equal access to health and social care? Are you highlighting the plight of groups who have or have had a greater propensity to diabetes and/or suffer discrimination when accessing health care? Is the data missing to make comparisons and can you lobby for its collection and analysis?