Reprint from NJ Spotlight April 14, 2022 By: Lilo H. Stainton, Health Care Writer
‘No biological basis whatsoever.’ Health impacts to last beyond COVID, panel warns
Misinformation, historic barriers to care and systemic racism created a dangerous combination that exacerbated health disparities among New Jersey residents of color and white residents during the pandemic, according to a panel of doctors.
Those disparities are not limited to the impact and treatment of COVID-19 — which had an outsized toll on Black and Latino communities here and nationwide. But there are also significant racial gaps in rates and outcomes involving diabetes, heart disease and cancers, the physicians explained during an online discussion Wednesday.
“It is critically important to understand that these disparities have no biological basis whatsoever,” said Dr. Denise Rodgers, vice chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Services. “It isn’t that there is something underlying in people of color that makes them more vulnerable.”
Black and Latino people are more likely to work in jobs that put them at risk for COVID-19 infection, or other health issues, more likely to live in communities where disease can spread and less likely to have access to quality medical care, Rodgers said. That’s why addressing underlying social determinants of health, like housing and economics, is critical in creating health equity, she said, many of which are impacted “by the long legacy of racism and discrimination.”
Diagnosing social determinants
The online panel, which focused on social determinants and was timed to coincide with Minority and Multicultural Health Month, sought to highlight the impact of the pandemic on the state’s communities of color and to provide resources for residents, said moderator Amanda Medina-Forrester, executive director of the state health department’s Office of Minority and Multicultural Health. The panel was part of the YMCA State Alliance’s ongoing discussion series, “Building a Culture of Health in New Jersey,” which is supported by the health department and other funders. Some 200 viewers participated, according to the state.
CORONAVIRUS IN NJ, HEALTH CARE
Coronavirus Exacts Greater Toll on Communities of Color
Dr. Shawna Hudson, a community health and family medicine professor at Rutgers University, warned that Black people have higher death rates from breast and other cancers. Much of that is impacted by access to care, she said, urging people to “get back to our original ways of doing screenings” for cancer and other disease. (Screen NJ, a statewide collaboration, is a good resource to locate testing, she said.)
“Cancer screenings are important for all populations but particularly important for minority populations because what we are finding is that people do well when we are able to find cancer at early stages,” Hudson said. “What we find is with our Black and Latino populations is that often we are being diagnosed at much later stages.”
Race and Health Care in New Jersey: Addressing Inequities in the COVID-19 Era
Among children, Black and Latino youngsters have long been less likely to be screened or receive services for developmental challenges, when compared to white kids, according to Dr. Manny Jimenez, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. It’s not clear how the pandemic impacted this disparity, he said, but it clearly led to a dip in regular childhood immunizations, which may not have bounced back yet.
“I think there was this idea that the pandemic sort of spared children. And it simply was not true,” Jimenez said. Severe illness was less likely, he said, “however there were children who became very ill as a result of COVID,” as well as those who suffered learning loss and other setbacks.
Another reason to fear the dentist
Access is also an issue for Black and brown families seeking dental care, dentist Nicole McGrath-Barnes explained. McGrath-Barnes, president of the KinderSmile Foundation which provides care for low-income families, said the pandemic had a “grave impact” on oral care, with people avoiding dentists out of fear of infection.
“Oral disease is the number one preventative disease,” McGrath-Barnes said, reminding people to visit the dentist every six months. Children should have their first visit by age 1, she said, but she encourages parents to bring youngsters as soon as their first teeth emerge to encourage optimal oral care.
COVID-19 has taken an extreme toll on communities of color in New Jersey and nationwide, with residents more likely to be infected and suffer negative consequences. Black New Jerseyans were twice as likely to be hospitalized or die of COVID-19, when compared to whites, and the virus was the number one killer of Black residents in 2020, state data showed, causing or contributing to at least one in five deaths.
The panel discussion also coincided with Black Maternal Health Week, leading to questions about the pandemic’s unique impact on pregnant woman, which Rodgers said was significant. Only 43% of pregnant women had been immunized against COVID-19 since the pandemic’s start, according to federal data released earlier this year, but that ranged from six in 10 for Asian women to just over one in four Black moms-to-be.
“One of the scariest things for me,” Rodgers said, “was the phenomenon of misinformation about the safety of these (COVID-19) vaccines in pregnant women, which resulted in a substantial number of women having complications relating to COVID.”
“You had this craziness on the internet” about the danger of the shots, she said, “when just the opposite was true. So there is absolutely no question that we’ve seen an adverse impact, particularly on pregnant women of color, related to getting COVID, and then having bad outcomes, because people were afraid of getting the vaccine.”
sistateacher’s thoughts
Social determinants of health are a major area of concern for marginalized, under-resourced, and underrepresented communities. There is a lack of equitable resource distribution to these communities in terms of people, location, time, buildings, transportation, etc.
With regards to people, it relates to the professional being a representative of the community in which they serve, a sufficient number of people to meet the community demand, proper training for those who provide services, and longevity of employment with service to the community.
The location of health services is distant from community members’ residences. Also, transportation poses a barrier to accessing health services due to no vehicle, limited mass transportation, and/or no money to pay bus fares or someone to transport. Additionally, appointment times are scheduled at inconvenient times when people are working.
Ultimately, there are intersections of inequities that impact the health of marginalized, under-resourced, and underrepresented communities. It is time to eliminate the inequities for future generations. Since INEQUITY is literally a matter of life and death.
sistateacher 