The Tuskegee syphilis experiment. The secret sale of Henrietta Lacks cancer research cells. Jim Crow laws affecting African Americans' ability to receive medical treatment.
For weeks, it’s been hard to hear over the clamor of millions of Americans lining up for COVID-19 vaccines. But not everyone has been enthused — namely, large swaths of minority communities, which comprise the populations disproportionately impacted by the virus, but whose hesitance is largely fueled by the country’s racist medical past.
Melva Thompson-Robinson For help understanding the connections between the U.S.’s history of systemic racism, its impact on the health care industry, and the connection to the COVID-19 pandemic, we turned to Melva Thompson-Robinson, tenured professor and executive director of the Center for Health Disparities Research within UNLV’s School of Public Health.
“COVID really ripped back the bandaid,” she said, “and made people take notice.”
Here, Thompson-Robinson explains how and why the pandemic has impacted people of color, tips for overcoming vaccine fears, and ways public health officials can improve messaging.
Media reports have outlined data showing that communities of color have been most impacted by COVID-19. What's driving this health disparity?
There are a lot of things at play here. Some of it relates to employment. People of color tend to be employed in frontline essential jobs — working in restaurants and grocery stores, cleaning up in hospitals and other places. As such, they’re required to go to work and interact with the public, increasing their risk of exposure to COVID-19. At least early on, the PPE (personal protective equipment) just wasn’t available or, because of the initially conflicting public health messaging at the start of the pandemic, people didn’t understand the importance of wearing masks or taking other preventative measures.
Next, if you’re infected, you’re supposed to quarantine. But not all people of color live in a 2,000-square-foot home with two other people. They may have a significant number of people or multi-generations living under the same roof in a small dwelling. That means there’s no place to isolate within the home. At the same time, you don’t have the resources to stay in a hotel for 10 days. So all of this has created a storm.
Some of this, too, is centered around systemic racism. After World War II and into the 1980s, there was this practice of “redlining,” where red lines were literally drawn around community maps and banks would only provide home loans to African Americans and other people of color who wanted to buy homes in specific segregated communities.
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