Throughout President Biden’s State of the Union handle earlier this month, he expressed confidence that the USA is rising into a brand new normalcy after our lengthy two-year battle with the novel coronavirus that claimed the lives of almost 973,000 Americans (as of March 30, 2022). This confidence is validated by two-thirds of the American populace fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the event of lifesaving therapeutics, and the decline in instances of the infectious omicron variant.
As we’re higher positioned to fight the pandemic, our collective need to maneuver past COVID-19 necessitates that we middle our efforts on marginalized and minority communities which were traditionally disproportionately impacted by public well being crises.
Our public well being infrastructure and policymakers’ focus ought to shift to eliminating health-related racial disparities. These disparities prolong effectively past COVID-19, impacting maternal well being outcomes for Black and indigenous girls and local weather management in communities of shade in way more stark methods than their white counterparts.
There has by no means been a extra consequential time for the general public well being workforce than now.
Bishar Jenkins, Jr. | SOPHE Supervisor of Coverage & Applications
Since many current disparities have been produced by many years and typically centuries-old choices that triggered structural injustices for communities of shade, the options we suggest would require transformative and strategic investments into communities of shade.
Additional, we must always middle on marginalized communities and the options they wish to see carried out of their communities. Honoring grassroots and group data when crafting coverage options is crucial to reaching antiracist insurance policies. Appropriating transformative funding on to group stakeholders who’ve established an ideal diploma of belief within the communities they serve is an important part to eliminating well being disparities.
There has by no means been a extra consequential time for the general public well being workforce than now. We honor all our public well being staff, particularly our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and individuals of shade) public well being staff. We acknowledge their efforts and acknowledge that our collective efforts to eradicate racial well being disparities additionally depend on their experience and data. We name on policymakers to middle the psychological well being and wellbeing of public well being staff serving marginalized and weak communities. The psychological well being toll these staff skilled lengthy earlier than COVID was solely exacerbated throughout the worst world pandemic in a century.
If one other pandemic occurs, the burden doesn’t must inflict the identical horrible value on marginalized and minority communities or public well being staff who signify those self same communities. Incorporating marginalized communities into the choice course of and creating advance coverage options to answer obtain well being justice is the start of embracing an antiracist method to Public Well being.
Bishar Jenkins, Jr. , MPP | Supervisor, Coverage & Applications
Be taught extra about SOPHE’s advocacy efforts.
