The New York City Board of Health declared racism a public health crisis on Monday, passing a resolution directing the Department of Health to take steps to ensure “racial recovery” from the coronavirus pandemic.
vow Calls on the department to work with other agencies to root out systemic racism within policies, plans and budgets on a wide range of matters affecting health, including land use, transportation and education. It also directed the department to improve data-collection practices and examine both the health code and its own history for structural bias.
The commissioner of the department, Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, is also one of the 11 medical experts on its board. In the meeting on Monday, Mr. He said the board was established in the early 1800s amid epidemics of yellow fever, cholera and smallpox. Advances in sanitation and understanding the relationship between environmental factors and health helped curb those diseases.
He drawn a parallel For the current pandemic, and its huge impact on communities of color.
“Why do some non-white populations develop severe disease and die from Covid-19 at a higher rate than whites?” he said. “Inherent health conditions undoubtedly play a role. But why do communities of color have higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, and obesity? The answer does not lie in biology. Structural and environmental factors such as disinhibition, discrimination, and disinformation can cause these diseases in communities of color.” cause more burden.
“The Covid-19 pandemic must render the unacceptable what has been forgiven for generations,” he said.
The department is one of the largest public health agencies in the world, and one of the oldest in the country. Its board members, who are appointed by the mayor with the consent of the city council, serve without pay and oversee the health code.
More than 200 similar announcements have been made by municipalities, health agencies and elected officials across the country. a database Maintained by the American Public Health Association. federal center for disease control and prevention meditation is also called How racism affects disease rates and life expectancy.
But the New York Department of Health said Its resolution was one of the first to be linked to specific instructions. These include making recommendations to the mayor’s Racial Justice Commission and establishing a Data for Equity Working Group, which is designed to ensure that the department applies an “equity lens” to public health data and to other agencies. Educates on how to do it.
The resolution also called on the department to examine its role in “disinvestment and under-investment in critical community-led health programs”.
Dr. Michelle Morse, the chief medical officer and a deputy commissioner of the health department called the passage of the resolution “a hopeful milestone” but added that it was only one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
He said strategies such as updating the city’s health code and investing in disadvantaged areas were key.
“One of the ways racism is expressed at the policy level is through passivity in the face of need,” she said.
builds on resolution a statement Department released in June 2020 amid widespread protests following the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. The statement vowed to address racism “as a social determinant of health as part of our mission to protect the health of New Yorkers.”
Dr. Kito Demisi, dean of the School of Public Health at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, welcomed the proposal as a good start.
“I like the idea, that they’re focusing on the issue,” he said. “The most important thing now is to look at its implementation, look at the investment, and see the changes to come.”
He said the huge difference in disease and death rates seen during the pandemic drew attention to long-standing inequalities.
“Covid-19 was like a magnifying glass for us to see what has existed for a long time,” he said. “Racial/ethnic disparity in health has been an epidemic.”