By Emily Deruy, The Mercury News, June 26, 2020
Kaiser Permanente said Friday it plans to put $100 million toward addressing the systemic racism and lack of economic opportunity that have hurt the health of Blacks and other people of color in the U.S.
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has hit Black and, in California, Latino people especially hard and there is growing acknowledgement among health care experts that racism is at the root of the disparity.
Black people, for instance, are more likely to suffer from diabetes and other conditions that can shorten life expectancy and make it harder to fight off the coronavirus and other diseases. One reason is that Blacks have less access to quality health care than whites. Locally, in heavily Latino parts of the Bay Area, the virus has proven particularly deadly. Some of that has to do with the fact that people of color are less likely to have access to jobs they can do from home, forcing them out into the community where their risk of exposure is higher.
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