Blacks in California are dying from COVID-19 at a higher rate. What’s being done to help?
California’s surgeon general, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, said in a webinar last Monday that African-Americans make up 6% of the state’s population and slightly more than 4% of COVID-19 cases, but account for 7.4% of deaths.
To discuss the burdens and solutions for COVID-19 among California’s Black population, Burke Harris, Governor Newsom’s office, the California Legislative Black Caucus and Assemblywoman Dr. Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), convened the webinar with Black leaders from across the state.
Although the Black communities in the state are not a monolith, three primary concerns were consistently expressed by leaders from Northern and Southern California and the Central Valley: the need for appropriate messaging and messengers, overcoming the mistrust of government and public health officials and ensuring equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.
Although the lower case rate among African-Americans may be “one potential bright spot,” suggesting something is going well, it could also mean insufficient data, Burke Harris said.
One possibility for missing data is that not enough Blacks are going for testing, because they can’t jeopardize missing work if they test positive.
The panel discussed the disproportionately high death rate among Blacks.
Burke Harris said many factors contribute to the higher death rates, including that African-Americans are more likely to be essential workers, placing them at more risk of exposure to the virus and the economic fallout, and they may suffer more adversity due to the current “reckoning of racial injustice.” Blacks also have higher rates of underlying health conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension.
She said California is the only state in the country that has implemented a health equity metric, which “holds state leaders accountable for monitoring the disparate impacts of COVID-19 and creating plans to address those disparities.”
The metric uses the California Healthy Places Index, which assesses a community’s health using 25 indicators, such as access to health care, housing, economic opportunity, education and the environment. To meet the metric, the viral test positivity rate in the most disadvantage areas of a county must meet the threshold for the least restrictive color-coated tier.
In Stanislaus County, as well as surrounding counties in the Central Valley, the Healthy Places Index falls in the bottom one-fifth in the state.
Challenges, solutions from across the state
The panelists discussed the challenges and solutions from their regions in the state.
From the Central Valley, Shantay Davies-Balch, director of the Fresno African American COVID-19 Coalition, highlighted some of the issues affecting Fresno County, as representative of the Valley.
She said the coalition evolved from a partnership with the county’s public health department with the goals of implementing culturally relevant COVID-19 education, increasing testing and ameliorating fears about the coronavirus. She said they also wanted to strengthen permanently the public health infrastructure, including hiring Black community health workers. They partnered with additional community-based organizations to provide outreach and education to other minority communities, who were being hit hard by the pandemic.
From Northern California, Andre’ Chapman, founder and CEO of Unity Care and the COVID-19 Black initiative addressed the challenges and grassroots solutions of nine Bay Area counties.
Chapman said one of the organization’s first goals was to develop culturally sensitive communications, including images of Blacks, to debunk some of the coronavirus myths. The coalition’s website, covid19black.org, includes a comprehensive list of resources, including Black-led organizations serving the Bay Area.
Dr. Rodney Hood, chair of the COVID-19 Equity Task Force in San Diego, said they brought together African-American community stakeholders to develop strategies to fight COVID-19, and they also joined forces with other minority groups. The task force was successful in influencing policy makers to allocate critical resources for setting up accessible testing and hiring contract tracers who reflected the communities they served.
Dr. Oliver T. Brooks, chief medical officer of Watts Healthcare Corporation and the immediate past president of the National Medical Association, a professional organization of Black physicians, offered a national perspective about the recent surge in COVID-19 cases and the rise in food insecurity brought on by the pandemic.
He said the NMA formed a COVID-19 task force, which meets regularly with some of the pharmaceutical companies preparing vaccines and other therapeutics to ensure they have the most up-to-date information. The NMA wants to function as messengers to Black physicians, who then serve as trusted messengers, as there are many skeptics in the Black community about COVID-19.
Weber said many in the Black community were concerned about equitable distribution of future COVID-19 vaccines. She said African-Americans still carry fears and mistrust of the government born from the unethical Tuskegee experiment, when researchers withheld treatment for syphilis from Black men so they could observe the course of untreated infection.
Burke Harris said she had also heard many of those concerns and that the state of California is committed to ensuring safety, equity and transparency for distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. She will be chairing the state’s community vaccine advisory committee, and at least two of the webinar’s panelists are also on the committee.
“As we fight this pandemic and work to reopen our economy, we all have to work together to make sure that all Californians are safe and healthy,” said Burke Harris, “And that means ensuring that people have the information that they need to protect themselves…(and that) the information is coming from someone that they trust.”
This story was produced with financial support from The Stanislaus County Office of Education and the Stanislaus Community Foundation, along with the GroundTruth Project’s Report for America initiative. The Modesto Bee maintains full editorial control of this work.
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This story was originally published November 30, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
