Gabriela Pena

        How do healthcare systems in the USA work against POC people?

    Throughout American history many groups of people have gone through horrendous actions field towards POC people, having gone through genocide, slavery, and a constant violations towards their human rights. As time progresses in the USA some aspects have been, to a degree, improved over time. But when looked at more in depth there is still deeply ingrained racism in many systems that are placed throughout the USA society. In this essay I will be focusing on one of the many systems that are in place in America today. I intend to bring focus on how the healthcare system treats POC people even through the current pandemic of COVID-19. With COVID-19 pandemic on rise for the past two years, studies shown over the course of the pandemic many impoverished communities, which is ‘disproportionately Black, Indigenous, or other people of color’ and caused many of these people to be affected by the COVID-19 having high infection rates and along with having higher risks of death. There have been numerous amount of people in American society that have pointed out many of these actions towards POC people, and have been seen many times in healthcare where there are studies showing that black people have been getting much sicker and dying much more than their white counterparts, being treated less and is given ‘second-rate health care is shortening their lives.’  This health system in America also has a crucial impact on how food is in the USA. In another of my sources, it has stated that in ‘An analysis examining trends in food insecurity from 2001 to 2016 found that food insecurity rates for both non-Hispanic black and Hispanic households were at least twice that of non-Hispanic white households. Moreover, while race/ethnic specific rates from the USDA are not available for all subgroups, other studies assessing food insecurity among American Indian/Alaska Native report similar results.’ shown in the research food also has deep systems of racism in the desperation of food throughout the USA. Giving POC people food that does more harm to them than good causes many medical problems expectually for diabetes. 

 

                            Healthcare

    The primary problem that will be addressed and be seen throughout this essay is how the healthcare system affects POC people. Throughout many different researches there have been many instances when healthcare is being less accessible to black communities and when black people are able to get healthcare, they receive a speck of the amount their white counterparts receive. As shown in the article “Implicit Bias and Racial Disparities in Health Care” by Khiara 

1. Bridges, in the second paragraph it is shown that in 2005 there has been an reported document which talks about how black people are ‘disproportionately live cannot account for the fact that black people are sicker and have shorter life spans than their white complements.’ As well as finding out that ‘NAM found that “racial and ethnic minorities receive lower-quality health care than white people—even when insurance status, income, age, and severity of conditions are comparable.” By “lower-quality health care,” NAM meant the concrete, inferior 

care that physicians give their black patients.’ From the beginning of this article we can see that NAM has found that POC people receive lower quality healthcare compared to white people in the USA, because of this racial bias, this causes many black people to get sicker and also have shorter lives. This racial bias in the USA causes POC to not receive the ‘appropriate cardiac care, to receive kidney dialysis or transplants, and to receive the best treatments for stroke, cancer, or AIDS.’ Continuing on with the article we see that another study shows that ‘400 hospitals in the United States showed that black patients with heart disease received older, cheaper, and more conservative treatments than their white counterparts.’ showing how healthcare in the USA prioritizes white people’s medical safety more than black people, giving black people out of date medicine for heart problems and many other diseases that can harm or even kill a person. This study also shows that ‘Black patients were less likely to receive coronary bypass operations and angiography.’ A coronary bypass operation is a surgery where it helps bring blood flow back into the patient’s heart, and an angiography is the ‘examination by X-ray of blood or lymph vessels, carried out after introduction of a radiopaque substance.’ [Oxford Languages Definition] Without these surgeries and X-rays to help the patient, the healthcare systems of America will straightforwardly refuse to give these operations to people based on the color of their skin. Even after these surgeries black patients ‘are discharged earlier from the hospital than white patients—at a stage when discharge is inappropriate. The same goes for other illnesses.’ This causes black people to not get the proper time to be able to fully heal after a major operation which can cause much harm to the person and cause them to have many more problems than going into the hospital. As the article continues, it furthermore shows more of the studies inform us that ‘Black women are less likely than white women to receive radiation therapy in 

conjunction with a mastectomy. In fact, they are less likely to receive mastectomies. Perhaps more disturbing is that black patients are more likely to receive less desirable treatments. The rates at which black patients have their limbs amputated is higher than those for white patients. Additionally, black patients suffering from bipolar disorder are more likely to be treated with antipsychotics despite evidence that these medications have long-term negative effects and are not effective.’ Here we can see how the healthcare systems work against black people, mistreating their diagnosis and as well as do extreme measures of ‘helping’ black people with their medical condition. Later in the article it also talks about the disposition of how ‘She notes that precious few physicians, like the general public, admit to harboring negative attitudes about any particular racial group. And we probably do not gain much by disbelieving their accounts. Thus, physicians’ explicit racial biases likely cannot account for racial disparities in health.’ This indicates that many health professionals work against POC people because they view them with negative attitudes, which is harmful and also unprofessional. 

 

                          COVID-19

    With the pandemic devastating many Americans collectively, many POC people were not able to get the needed  treatments to help with this major COVID-19 outbreak. In the article “Systemic racism, chronic health inequities, and COVID-19: A syndemic in the making?” Clarence C. Gravlee it states ‘During the entire course of the pandemic so far, data compiled by the non-profit APM Research Lab (2020) has shown that the crude death rate for Black Americans is more than double that for all other racialized groups’ showing that during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic it caused many black people to die, which is branches off of the main problem of how medical facilities treat their black patients. The study also shows when ‘adjusted for age, the risk of death from COVID-19 is as much as nine times higher for African Americans than it is for whites (Bassett, Chen, & Krieger, 2020)’ Which further shows how when a large pandemic hit the USA, the failing systems of healthcare caused many African Americans to lose their lives from COVID-19. When looking further into the article it brings up the point of how ‘COVID-19 has made these ideas feel urgent from the start. In early March, for example, the New York Times highlighted the intersection of social factors that increase the risk of infection in impoverished communities, such as housing density and reliance on public transportation, and “disproportionately high rates of disease and illness” that make infection more deadly (Eligon, 2020). Days later Time predicted that people with low incomes— disproportionately Black, Indigenous, or other people of color-’ With this in mind many of these impoverished communities are mainly built up of POC people causing them to have a higher risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19. Also with the effects of COVID-19 on POC groups furthermore includes how working at home affects them, when many of POC jobs are ones that are not able to transform into the work at home trend that occurred in 2020 to present times. In my family both of my parents don’t have jobs that can be worked on at home, they are both jobs that include work labor and many POC families experienced this lowering of jobs outside to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This is mentioned in the article saying ‘would face higher exposure to the virus (because they are less likely to be able to work from home, more likely to work in service sectors where contact with strangers is routine, more likely to live in multi-family apartment buildings) and had less access to sick leave and medical care if they did become sick (Vesoulis, 2020).’ To add on further with this quote when COVID-19 hit hard around my area there are many people who lived in multi family apartments who needs everyone to work to maintain a somewhat stable life for their families, but when the need to work from many of these people can’t do the same thing, being forced out of their houses as I have seen with many of my neighbors leaving their homes for years because they are unable to work leaving their families without shelter, and with less food than they had before. 

 

                        Food

    Now to touch on the final topic we will be discussing in this essay, food insecurity in POC communities. The article I will be discussing about is called “Examining the Impact of Structural Racism on Food Insecurity: Implications for Addressing Racial/Ethnic Disparities” by Angela M. Odoms-Young, PhD, Associate Professor. The first point this article discusses is about how many household have no food security ‘Recent data indicate that approximately 12.3% or 15.6 million households in the United States (U.S.) were food insecure at least some time during the last year’ with this food insecurity this caused ‘particularly in households with children including higher rates of diabetes and hypertension, self-reported fair or poor health, maternal depression, behavioral problems/developmental delays in early life, and poor academic achievement.’ With food insecurity causes many families going to fast food restaurants to try to feed their children, I see it a lot where I live, there are many people in the McDonalds sometimes too many for a quick meal grab, and with covid sometimes there was many people standing outside trying to get food for their families, but it’s not food that is good for you if you keep constantly eating it, causing more people to get these diseases for eating these foods. The next point the article makes is that ‘An analysis examining trends in food insecurity from 2001 to 2016 found that food insecurity rates for both non-Hispanic black and Hispanic households were at least twice that of non-Hispanic white households.’ With this statement it shows that how in black and latino communities have less food security than non latino white people, which affects their health substantially. Even when they do have the food around them to buy, it will be more expensive if buying from McDonalds or even at Burger King.   

 

Citations: Healthcare: Bridges, Khiara M. “Implicit Bias and Racial Disparities in Health Care.” Americanbar.org, 2018, www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/the-state-of-healthcare-in-the-united-states/racial-disparities-in-health-care/.  

COVID-19: Gravlee, Clarence C. “Systemic Racism, Chronic Health Inequities, and COVID‐19: A Syndemic in the Making?” American Journal of Human Biology, vol. 32, no. 5, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2020, p. e23482–n/a, https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23482

Food: Odoms-Young, Angela, and Marino A Bruce. “Examining the Impact of Structural Racism on Food Insecurity: Implications for Addressing Racial/Ethnic Disparities.” Family & Community Health, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5823283/.