The insidiousness of Systemic Inequality and Racism in the American Healthcare System

I recently had a conversation with a very dear friend of mine who has been a nurse for over 20 years.  She was taking a break from Social Media due to a lot of different factors, but I reached out to her to see if she was okay.  

She told me that she'd heard over and over during the years from Black patients, "I don't trust doctors", and she couldn't figure out why.  Why would you not trust the people that are supposed to keep you healthy and help you when you're sick?  And that would make sense under most circumstances.  However, since the slave times, there has been a lack of regard for the health of Blacks in this country, and it hasn't changed.  From food deserts to disdain from providers to the root of so many health problems for Blacks..it's a bitter pill to swallow. 

Currently we are seeing extremely disproportionate numbers of COVID positive patients in the Black community.  For the first time, people are asking "why?" and they are flabbergasted at what they are finding. 


If you look at how the health of Blacks in this country started poor and stayed poor, you need to start with slavery. When slaves were fed, they were commonly given the cast offs and spoiled food that their owners didn't want. Therefore in order to make it more palatable, slave cooking evolved into making every bite stretch as far as it could. Adding things like fat and sugar, frying things and making every bit count resulted in generations upon generations of individuals who lacked the nutritional knowledge or ability to do better. Disease doesn't Discriminate but the US Healthcare System Does


Systemic inequality in healthcare is nothing new.  Blacks are stuck in a cycle of being uninsured or underinsured, many rely on public healthcare coverage like Medicaid, and that is a stigma to some providers.  Many providers in this country would rather see patients with no insurance than ones with Medicaid because of the assumption that people that have Medicaid are lazy, don't want to work, and they are entitled. The AAFP even put out a statement regarding Institutional Racism AAFP Statement





Add to the fact that it is well documented that minorities have a lack of access to quality health health care, lack of disease management, the maternal fetal death rate for black women versus white women is almost double, and more...these are just some of the reasons that minorities have higher cases than COVID than others. Diabetes, Heart Disease and Obesity play a huge part in strengthening immunity. But if you're faced with systemic inequality in healthcare...it's a hard battle to win.

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