George Floyd’s death has magnified both the urgent need to end racism and, in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, the urgent need to end the racial injustice of health inequity in America, wrote Howard Koh of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in a June 18, 2020 Ideas article in Time magazine.
“It’s long past time to end the disproportionate, unjust and unnatural impact of disease on black Americans and other people of color,” wrote Koh, Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership and former assistant secretary for health in the Obama administration.
Pointing out the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on African Americans, Koh recommended four actions to help end racial injustice in health: improving the tracking of medical outcomes for communities of color, especially during health crises; working to extend health insurance to the roughly 29 million Americans who don’t have it; transforming how health professionals care for patients with different backgrounds than their own; and revitalizing public health departments and workforces.
Read the Time article: The COVID-19 Pandemic Shows Why We Must—And How We Can—End Racial Injustice in Health