PBS News Hour with Dr. Lisa Cooper
How COVID-19 is Highlighting Racial Disparities in Americans' Health?
On July 16, 2020, Dr. Lisa Cooper provided her expertise on health inequities to listeners during the PBS Newshour. COVID-19 is highlighting racial disparities in America, no question about it. In this 9 minute clip, you will hear statistics such as: Black Americans are twice as likely to die of COVID-19 than whites and Black Americans are almost four times as likely to die when you control for the fact that the black population is younger. So, a major question is then, why are Black people dying at a much higher rate?
“We do know that socio-economic status has a huge impact on a whole host of health outcomes. African Americans are at greater risk of developing chronic diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease… the body responds as if it is trying to defend itself so there are elevated levels of stress hormones. Also this leads to premature aging. So this would explain a lot of the phenomena that we see among African Americans.”
To hear more from Dr. Cooper and other experts on the pandemic of COVID-19 and the epidemic of racism in America, click on the first link under additional resources.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
To watch the full interview, click here.
See more from Dr. Lisa Cooper on her Accomplishments Page.