One of my first assignments as a reporter was to interview a cartoonist who lived on Chicago’s Gold Coast, a sliver of affluence set between Lake Michigan and a nasty housing project. Killing time before the interview, I stopped at a jeweler and asked the price of a watch in the window. The manager ducked into a storeroom and led out an enormous Doberman, straining at its leash. With a snarl that matched the dog’s, she said, ”Now, may I help you?” The cartoonist was not much better. She opened the door a crack then shut it in my face.

Many white readers will disbelieve these stories. Many others will see a case of ”rational discrimination” by women who had reason to fear damage from a black man. But to be presumed a criminal until proven otherwise is a punishing experience, one that even African-American millionaires know well. The axiom is that you make peace with the experience or lose your mind. But actually reaching peace seems not to be possible. New research suggests that stress related to discrimination may be just as potent a health risk as smoking or a high-fat diet — things that lead to premature death through cardiovascular disease.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/14/us/lies-men-tell-put-women-in-danger-of-aids.html займы на карту срочно

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the UCLA Health Black Leadership Coalition and the UCLA Health Office of Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion discuss the COVID-19 pandemic and demands to end longtime systemic inequality.

BRITE Center Director Dr. Vickie Mays is quoted in an article on a Los Angeles County survey of more than 3,500 women, including women 65 and older, those with disabilities, and women who defined themselves as bisexual or lesbian.
Read the full article here. займ на карту без отказов круглосуточно

Ability to respond to directives of social distancing has also been cited as a possible contributor to the excess burden of COVID-19 disease borne by minority communities. An important aspect of this is the ability to follow stay at home advice when an individual has an occupation deemed essential, but this additionally refers to the difficulty many communities of color have in maintaining social distance when living in spaces with more than one individual per room or in relatively crowded neighborhoods.

A recent analysis of emergency room visits for flu-like symptoms across all zip codes in New York City (NYC) compared the frequency of such visits in March 2020 to the frequency average for the month of March in years 2016 through 2019 to determine the difference and found that while every NYC zip code had an increase in the frequency of trips to the emergency room for flu-like symptoms, predominantly white neighborhoods saw the lowest increase in number of visits to the ER, while neighborhoods with an increase of at least 5 visits per 1,000 population were majority people of color (eg, Latinx, foreign-born). Moreover, the same pattern of increased visits to the emergency room for flu-like symptoms was evident when the data were organized by percent rental crowding and percent poverty.

A similar analysis was performed on the number of positive coronavirus cases per zip code in each of the 10 California counties with the highest case count as of May. Excluding neighborhoods with fewer than 2,500 residents or fewer than five infections and defining overcrowded households as those with more people than rooms of all types (besides bathrooms), the study found that compared with the 20% of neighborhoods with the lowest rate of COVID-19 diagnosis, the 20% of neighborhoods with the highest rates of COVID-19 diagnosis had three times the rate of overcrowding and twice the rate of poverty. The study also found that the least affected neighborhoods were approximately 50% white, while 82% of residents in the most affected neighborhoods were individuals of color. Extending their analysis to essential workers specifically, the study investigators also found that approximately two-thirds of Californians in overcrowded homes are either essential workers themselves, or live with an essential worker, of these 75% live in poverty, 92% are individuals of color, and 12% lack health insurance.

Other analyses paint a similar picture. Taken together these studies make it clear that any public health intervention that hopes to address the disproportionate impact COVID-19 has on communities of color must include components that address the impact crowded living spaces has on disease transmission.

Related Links

• Cimini, K., & Botts, J. (2020). Close Quarters: California’s overcrowded homes fuel spread of coronavirus among workers. (CalMatters: The California Divide Project)
• Feldman, J. (2020). Does COVID-19’s toll reflect social inequality? Early evidence from NYC. (Medium)
• Schuetz, J. (2020). America’s inequitable housing system is completely unprepared for coronavirus. (The Brookings Institute)

Welcome to the new and improved BRITE Center website! We redesigned our website to better present our work and opportunities for collaboration and partnership. The center is a resource for students, community members, policymakers and the academic community interested in helping to reduce health disparities for underserved communities. One of the center’s goals is to make our ongoing research into what causes disparities and how to address them available to anyone interested in being a part of improving health. In this website update, we’ve made our publications and past projects more accessible and searchable by issue and keyword. We will also be making products such as our training curriculums available by request and also by download where possible.

Take a moment to “click” around. We would greatly appreciate your feedback about what works and what doesn’t; whether you can find what you are looking for; and whether you would like to join any of our ongoing efforts.  We look forward to partnering with you in our work.

Sincerely,

Vickie M. Mays, PhD, MSPH