Black patients are more likely to get amputations from heart complications, children in majority Black neighborhoods are more likely to be exposed to lead, and Black patients with multiple sclerosis have the disease more severely than their white counterparts.
Housed in what used to be Columbus’ Martin Luther King Jr. library branch, these were just a few of the many facts a crowded community room in the Near East Side neighborhood heard, scribbled notes about and asked questions at Black Health: A Journey Through Time.
Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s Healthy Community Center was packed with Black health advocates and interested residents all coming to be educated on Black health history, outcomes and possible solutions at a time when diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or any related programs, policies and language are under intense scrutiny by President Donald Trump’s administration.
“It’s not about DEI, it’s about health equity, said Dr. Mysheika Roberts, health commissioner for the city of Columbus. “What we’re talking about is providing communities that have different health needs what they need to address their health.”
“The health care we provide to a five-year-old is different than the health care we provide to a nine-year-old. The health care I provide to an African American might be different than the health care I provide to a Caucasian,” she said. “It’s not always about race. It can be about gender, it could be about age, it could be about race, or it could be about environment.”
History informs the present on health
In order to know where Black health is going, it’s important to look at where it’s been.
“I don’t think we can move forward as a community, whether we’re Black or white, unless we know the history — where we’ve come from and where we are, where we are and where we need to go,” said Roberts.
She, along with Dr. Sakima Smith, associate professor of medicine at OSU and, Dr. Darryl Hood, professor of environmental health sciences at OSU, explained how structural racism and medical mistrust have hurt the understanding of Black health. This includes the infamous Tuskegee experiments on Black men and redlining, where financial services were withheld from neighborhoods of color.
These practices and more have contributed to a widening chasm of health disparities between Black and white individuals. Health experts credit the Tuskegee experiments and similar events with a legacy of medical mistrust in the Black community, making the community less likely to seek care when needed, decreasing personal health literacy and making them less likely to take part in clinical trials.
This hurts health outcomes for Black patients and means the community is studied at much lower rates than white counterparts.
“We need to diversify the pipeline. We need to try to reduce implicit bias in those that may have it and do training. We need to increase the number of underrepresented [physicians],” Smith emphasized. “We need to bring high-tech care to the community. Everything that’s in the major academic university centers needs to also be in the community. We need to standardize care for everyone”
The effects of redlining have permeated well into the 21st century. Hood’s work primarily focused on how environmental and social factors in neighborhoods contribute to health and showed how a person’s ZIP code in Columbus can determine their health outcomes. In historically redlined neighborhoods with large populations of color, rates of chronic disease, low birth weights and other health issues remain higher than other neighborhoods.
But Hood was not dismayed. He was excited at the amount of data that despite decades of obstacles, is now at their fingertips.
“Although we have challenges, we are now in a position because of the massive amounts of data we have.. and people like yourselves that are going to invite us into your communities,” Hood said. “We can solve this.”
Samantha Hendrickson is The Dispatch’s medical business and health care reporter. She can be reached at [email protected]
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