Why Oakland says racism is a public health crisis

Gianna Melillo | June 14, 2022
·2 min read

Story at a glance

  • In the wake of racial inequities spotlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, cities and institutions are moving to classify racism as a public health crisis.

  • Systemic inequities along with bias within the medical community contribute to poor health outcomes among racial minorities in the United States.

  • Experts hope that by addressing racism head on, health outcomes will improve.

Despite experts calling out racial disparities in health care for years, the COVID-19 pandemic served as an impetus behind the modern movement to eradicate these inequities on a wider scale.

Throughout the pandemic Black, Hispanic and Native American individuals bore the brunt of COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality, while numerous studies have outlined disproportionate effects of chronic disease and social determinants of health on racial minorities.

Now, to confront the root cause of these disparities head on, the city of Oakland, Calif., voted last Tuesday without opposition to declare racism a public health crisis.

As a result, the city now has $350,000 at its disposal to improve systems, process data and implement changes aimed at advancing racial equity.

Darlene Flynn, executive director of Oakland’s department of race and equity, likened the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 to those seen following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“Whenever a big stressor hits a community, it really highlights what the underlying conditions have been for a long time,” she told NPR.

The move comes after Boston declared racism a public health crisis in 2020 and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr. Rochelle Walensky made similar claims in 2021.

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“Racism is not just the discrimination against one group based on the color of their skin or their race or ethnicity, but the structural barriers that impact racial and ethnic groups differently to influence where a person lives, where they work, where their children play, and where they worship and gather in community,” Walensky said at the time.

“These social determinants of health have life-long negative effects on the mental and physical health of individuals in communities of color.”

In Oakland specifically, data have shown residents living in predominantly white neighborhoods can have life expectancies up to 15 years longer than those residing in majority Black or Latinx neighborhoods.

In addition to systemic inequities, racism within the health care industry can also perpetuate disparities. Research from as recent as 2016 found, “beliefs about biological differences between Black [people] and white [people]—beliefs dating back to slavery—are associated with the perception that Black people feel less pain than do white people and with inadequate treatment recommendations for Black patients’ pain.”

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