Even in Wealthy Areas of the U.S., People of Color Are More Likely to Get and Die from Coronavirus, Study Says

COVID-19 has had a disproportionately heavy toll on U.S. communities of color across income levels, according to a new research letter published in JAMA Network Open. Poverty is one of the clearest consequences of structural racism, and one of the easiest to link to health inequity. You can trace an unbroken line from racist real estate and employment policies to the struggle of many Black and brown families to afford things like fresh food, insurance and quality medical care. These disadvantages always have a direct impact on health—but especially during a pandemic. The new study, however, shows that structural racism affects health in ways that go beyond poverty. “Income is one feature that’s important,” says senior author Andrea Troxel, director of the division of biostatistics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, “but there are so many others.” Troxel’s paper drew on publicly available data from counties surrounding 10 of the country’s largest urban areas. The researchers first sorted the counties into those with relatively high and low rates of poverty. The median income across high-poverty counties was about $60,000, compared to about $80,000 for low-poverty counties. Next, the researchers looked at the racial makeup of each county, along with the local incidence of COVID-19 infection and death through May 10. They found that people living in substantially non-white communities were significantly more l...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news