San Jose State community members and public health experts discussed U.S. racial disparities and systemic health barriers throughout the coronavirus pandemic during a Zoom panel Tuesday.
The SJSU Office of the President event is part of a two-week series, “Transforming Communities: A Movement to Racial Justice,” organized by Jahmal Williams, director of advocacy for racial justice.
The panel was facilitated by Miranda Worthen, a SJSU public health and recreation associate professor and research coordinator at the Human Rights Institute, which specializes in human rights research, journalism and policy creation.
Worthen said the series was conceptualized as a “community university partnership” and Tuesday’s discussion originated from the public health injustices many individuals experienced through the pandemic.
“[Tuesday’s] event was really motivated by the sense of just the massive disparities and the experiences during the pandemic but also the rich conversations about health,” she said after the webinar.
The panel included four health experts with background in public health advocacy: Dr. Toni Eyssallenne, Dr. Rhea Boyd, Dr. Paula Braveman and public health expert Julia Liou.
Eyssallenne, an advocate for health equity and anti-racism praxis in care delivery, said people of color have accumulated trauma over “centuries of misinformation” regarding healthcare and mistreatment by healthcare providers.
“[Healthcare workers] are taught to memorize that noncompliance, black hypertension and diabetes go together,” Eyssallenne said. “This is a tragedy because [the patient] was discharged with instructions targeted towards someone who was a non-diabetic instead of someone who needs education about having diabetes for the first time and how to manage it.”
She said because of the distrust, misinformation and risk for premature death in people of color, many are hesitant to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
According to an Oct. 26 Kaiser Family Foundation article, 47% of Black Americans have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose as of Oct. 18, which is the smallest total population of individuals by race/ethnicity.
The Kaiser Family Foundation is a nonprofit organization located in San Francisco that provides data and policy analysis regarding national health issues, according to its website.
Eyssallenne said many people of color distrust their healthcare providers because public health officials and lawmakers need to fix the basics of health and education systems.
“Why would folks, [who are] historically and consistently abused by healthcare workers, healthcare protocols and health plans, trust that we could manage a pandemic in their best interest?” she said.
Eyssallenne said the New York City Health Department declared racism a public health crisis, which is a “step in the right direction.”
The resolution that passed on Oct. 18 directed the New York Health Department to work with other city departments to assist in eliminating systemic racism in policies, budgets and other areas that affect public health, according to an Oct. 19 New York Times article.
“Justice can start with recognition but we need to drive that recognition to tangible change,” Eyssallenne said.
Paula Braveman, University of California San Francisco professor of family and community medicine and the center on social disparities in health director, said another example of systemic health disparities is when those in marginalized groups experience chronic stress because of economic hardships or interpersonal racism.
Chronic stress is a consistent sense of feeling overwhelmed for a long period of time caused by multiple life stressors, according to the Yale Medicine Chronic Stress Fact Sheet.
Braveman said those experiencing chronic stress are also more vulnerable to be infected with COVID-19 and are treated as “lesser” or “denigrated” in healthcare spaces.
“Each one of these examples of systemic or structural racism, in its own way, leads to people of color having less access to resources and to opportunities that are key for achieving the best health that one can achieve,” she said.
Panelist Rhea Boyd said during the first half of 2020, people of color experienced a large decline in life expectancy, which is “an enormous drop for such a short period of time.”
“Black men and women experienced the greatest declines in life expectancy, with non- Hispanic black men losing three years of their lives, just over the last 18 months alone, and non-Hispanic black women losing 2.3 years,” she said.
Boyd said universities can support students who’ve experienced “traumatic losses” because of deaths caused by COVID-19 by providing free mental health services.
“Communities who have been disproportionately impacted by COVID should have access to free, readily available mental health services so that people can be in counseling or talking to a therapist or provider who is from their background,” she said.
SJSU public health senior Samar Robleh said Worthen, her professor, encouraged her class to apply their knowledge of public health in a “hands-on experience” by helping moderate the discussion.
Robleh said she hopes students and community members valued the public health information the panelists gave.
“There's so much information out there. There's so many doubts. There's so many questions and I just feel like we just need leadership more than ever,” she said after the webinar.
