Citizens' Oversight Maryland---Maryland Progressives
CINDY WALSH FOR MAYOR OF BALTIMORE----SOCIAL DEMOCRAT
Citizens Oversight Maryland.com
  • Home
  • Cindy Walsh for Mayor of Baltimore
    • Mayoral Election violations
    • Questionnaires from Community >
      • Education Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Housing Questionnaire
      • Emerging Youth Questionnaire
      • Health Care policy for Baltimore
      • Environmental Questionnaires
      • Livable Baltimore questionnaire
      • Labor Questionnnaire
      • Ending Food Deserts Questionnaire
      • Maryland Out of School Time Network
      • LBGTQ Questionnaire
      • Citizen Artist Baltimore Mayoral Forum on Arts & Culture Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Transit Choices Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Activating Solidarity Economies (BASE)
      • Downtown Partnership Questionnaire
      • The Northeast Baltimore Communities Of BelAir Edison Community Association (BECCA )and Frankford Improvement Association, Inc. (FIA)
      • Streets and Transportation/Neighbood Questionnaire
      • African American Tourism and business questionnaire
      • Baltimore Sun Questionnaire
      • City Paper Mayoral Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Technology Com Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Biker's Questionnair
      • Homewood Friends Meeting Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Historical Collaboration---Anthem Project
      • Tubman City News Mayoral Questionnaire
      • Maryland Public Policy Institute Questionnaire
      • AFRO questionnaire
      • WBAL Candidate's Survey
  • Blog
  • Trans Pacific Pact (TPP)
  • Progressive vs. Third Way Corporate Democrats
    • Third Way Think Tanks
  • Financial Reform/Wall Street Fraud
    • Consumer Financial Protection Bureau >
      • CFPB Actions
    • Voted to Repeal Glass-Steagall
    • Federal Reserve >
      • Federal Reserve Actions
    • Securities and Exchange Commission >
      • SEC Actions
    • Commodity Futures Trading Commission >
      • CFTC Actions
    • Office of the Comptroller of the Currency >
      • OCC Actions
    • Office of Treasury/ Inspector General for the Treasury
    • FINRA >
      • FINRA ACTIONS
  • Federal Healthcare Reform
    • Health Care Fraud in the US
    • Health and Human Services Actions
  • Social Security and Entitlement Reform
    • Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP Actions
  • Federal Education Reform
    • Education Advocates
  • Government Schedules
    • Baltimore City Council
    • Maryland State Assembly >
      • Budget and Taxation Committee
    • US Congress
  • State and Local Government
    • Baltimore City Government >
      • City Hall Actions
      • Baltimore City Council >
        • Baltimore City Council Actions
      • Baltimore Board of Estimates meeting >
        • Board of Estimates Actions
    • Governor's Office >
      • Telling the World about O'Malley
    • Lt. Governor Brown
    • Maryland General Assembly Committees >
      • Communications with Maryland Assembly
      • Budget and Taxation Committees >
        • Actions
        • Pension news
      • Finance Committees >
        • Schedule
      • Business Licensing and Regulation
      • Judicial, Rules, and Nominations Committee
      • Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee >
        • Committee Actions
    • Maryland State Attorney General >
      • Open Meetings Act
      • Maryland Courts >
        • Maryland Court System
    • States Attorney - Baltimore's Prosecutor
    • State Comptroller's Office >
      • Maryland Business Tax Reform >
        • Business Tax Reform Issues
  • Maryland Committee Actions
    • Board of Public Works >
      • Public Works Actions
    • Maryland Public Service Commission >
      • Public Meetings
    • Maryland Health Care Commission/Maryland Community Health Resources Commission >
      • MHCC/MCHRC Actions
    • Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition
  • Maryland and Baltimore Development Organizations
    • Baltimore/Maryland Development History
    • Committee Actions
    • Maryland Development Organizations
  • Maryland State Department of Education
    • Charter Schools
    • Public Schools
    • Algebra Project Award
  • Baltimore City School Board
    • Charter Schools >
      • Charter Schools---Performance
      • Charter School Issues
    • Public Schools >
      • Public School Issues
  • Progressive Issues
    • Fair and Balanced Elections
    • Labor Issues
    • Rule of Law Issues >
      • Rule of Law
    • Justice issues 2
    • Justice Issues
    • Progressive Tax Reform Issues >
      • Maryland Tax Reform Issues
      • Baltimore Tax Reform Issues
    • Strong Public Education >
      • Corporate education reform organizations
    • Healthcare for All Issues >
      • Universal Care Bill by state
  • Building Strong Media
    • Media with a Progressive Agenda (I'm still checking on that!) >
      • anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com
      • "Talk About It" Radio - WFBR 1590AM Baltimore
      • Promethius Radio Project
      • Clearing the Fog
      • Democracy Now
      • Black Agenda Radio
      • World Truth. TV Your Alternative News Network.
      • Daily Censured
      • Bill Moyers Journal
      • Center for Public Integrity
      • Public Radio International
      • Baltimore Brew
      • Free Press
    • Far Left/Socialist Media
    • Media with a Third Way Agenda >
      • MSNBC
      • Center for Media and Democracy
      • Public Radio and TV >
        • NPR and MPT News
      • TruthOut
  • Progressive Organizations
    • Political Organizations >
      • Progressives United
      • Democracy for America
    • Labor Organizations >
      • United Workers
      • Unite Here Local 7
      • ROC-NY works to build power and win justice
    • Justice Organizations >
      • APC Baltimore
      • Occupy Baltimore
    • Rule of Law Organizations >
      • Bill of Rights Defense Committee
      • National Lawyers Guild
      • National ACLU
    • Tax Reform Organizations
    • Healthcare for All Organizations >
      • Healthcare is a Human Right - Maryland
      • PNHP Physicians for a National Health Program
      • Healthcare NOW- Maryland
    • Public Education Organizations >
      • Parents Across America
      • Philadelphia Public School Notebook thenotebook.org
      • Chicago Teachers Union/Blog
      • Ed Wize Blog
      • Educators for a Democratic Union
      • Big Education Ape
    • Elections Organizations >
      • League of Women Voters
  • Progressive Actions
    • Labor Actions
    • Justice Actions
    • Tax Reform Actions >
      • Baltimore Tax Actions
      • Maryland Tax Reform Actions
    • Healthcare Actions
    • Public Education Actions
    • Rule of Law Actions >
      • Suing Federal and State government
    • Free and Fair Elections Actions
  • Maryland/Baltimore Voting Districts - your politicians and their votes
    • 2014 ELECTION OF STATE OFFICES
    • Maryland Assembly/Baltimore
  • Petitions, Complaints, and Freedom of Information Requests
    • Complaints - Government and Consumer >
      • Sample Complaints
    • Petitions >
      • Sample Petitions
    • Freedom of Information >
      • Sample Letters
  • State of the Democratic Party
  • Misc
    • WBFF TV
    • WBAL TV
    • WJZ TV
    • WMAR TV
    • WOLB Radio---Radio One
    • The Gazette
    • Baltimore Sun Media Group
  • Misc 2
    • Maryland Public Television
    • WYPR
    • WEAA
    • Maryland Reporter
  • Misc 3
    • University of Maryland
    • Morgan State University
  • Misc 4
    • Baltimore Education Coalition
    • BUILD Baltimore
    • Church of the Great Commission
    • Maryland Democratic Party
    • Pennsylvania Avenue AME Zion Church
    • Maryland Municipal League
    • Maryland League of Women Voters
  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • Standard of Review
  • Untitled
  • WALSH FOR GOVERNOR - CANDIDATE INFORMATION AND PLATFORM
    • Campaign Finance/Campaign donations
    • Speaking Events
    • Why Heather Mizeur is NOT a progressive
    • Campaign responses to Community Organization Questionnaires
    • Cindy Walsh vs Maryland Board of Elections >
      • Leniency from court for self-representing plaintiffs
      • Amended Complaint
      • Plaintiff request for expedited trial date
      • Response to Motion to Dismiss--Brown, Gansler, Mackie, and Lamone
      • Injunction and Mandamus
      • DECISION/APPEAL TO SPECIAL COURT OF APPEALS---Baltimore City Circuit Court response to Cindy Walsh complaint >
        • Brief for Maryland Court of Special Appeals >
          • Cover Page ---yellow
          • Table of Contents
          • Table of Authorities
          • Leniency for Pro Se Representation
          • Statement of Case
          • Questions Presented
          • Statement of Facts
          • Argument
          • Conclusion/Font and Type Size
          • Record Extract
          • Appendix
          • Motion for Reconsideration
          • Response to Defendants Motion to Dismiss
          • Motion to Reconsider Dismissal
      • General Election fraud and recount complaints
    • Cindy Walsh goes to Federal Court for Maryland election violations >
      • Complaints filed with the FCC, the IRS, and the FBI
      • Zapple Doctrine---Media Time for Major Party candidates
      • Complaint filed with the US Justice Department for election fraud and court irregularities.
      • US Attorney General, Maryland Attorney General, and Maryland Board of Elections are charged with enforcing election law
      • Private media has a responsibility to allow access to all candidates in an election race. >
        • Print press accountable to false statement of facts
      • Polling should not determine a candidate's viability especially if the polling is arbitrary
      • Viability of a candidate
      • Public media violates election law regarding do no damage to candidate's campaign
      • 501c3 Organizations violate election law in doing no damage to a candidate in a race >
        • 501c3 violations of election law-----private capital
      • Voter apathy increases when elections are not free and fair
  • Maryland Board of Elections certifies election on July 10, 2014
  • Maryland Elections ---2016

November 25th, 2017

11/25/2017

0 Comments

 
Could OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% using Johns Hopkins have pulled off tens of trillions of dollars in frauds----literally sucking most of MEDICARE AND MEDICAID funding dry with frauds in US cities to expand a few brands globally without those 5% black, white, and brown citizens in Baltimore?  OF COURSE NOT---THE GLOBAL 1% HAS NO POWER INSIDE NATIONS WITHOUT BUYING THOSE 5% PLAYERS.

Why does Baltimore have third world health outcomes, third world public health, and third world life expectancy?  Because of SCHMOKE, O'MALLEY, DIXON, RAWLINGS-BLAKE, NOW PUGH all simply doing what global 1% tells them.  As we shout over and again, Baltimore is filled with FREEMASONS AND GREEKS PLEDGED to do just this----one can no longer get a job without being part of that Charles Dicken's CHUZZLEWIT family gang.  We need CITIZENS in Baltimore to get rid of all those global 1% players in order to rebuild our strongest in world history public health system.
.  

We we are seeing in Baltimore in MOVING FORWARD US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES WITH GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES is a farm team 5% player glad to out those CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA as players ----while advancing the same global corporate campus SOCIALISM-----

Two things make us suspect this article is written by that same global 1% player----first they use the ONE WORLD UNITED NATIONS FAR-RIGHT WING talking point-----UNIVERSAL CARE/SINGLE-PAYER/MEDICARE FOR ALL-------having said nothing about ending Affordable Care Act and educating about why THAT policy is so bad----and second, the article makes people believe there is a goal of cleaning up brownfields when the goal is the opposite----MOVING FORWARD brings Chinese-level of toxic waste, environmental devastation that will make Baltimore's industrial waste sites look like a sandbox.



'Now his priority is cleaning up the brownfields and dumps that pockmark the city’s black neighborhoods, exposing the families living in them to a laundry list of toxins that have been linked to cancer and other diseases'.

REAL left social progressives agree that JIM CROW never left the south----the southern economies remained tied to PLANTATION ECONOMICS---this is why the south continued having a few very rich with most people being very poor.  So, this article does identify the problem for our 99% of black citizens in Baltimore.  Do we think the US is incapable of ending JIM CROW ---CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA of course expanded JIM CROW to our north and western US cities capturing all US politics to FAR-RIGHT WING REAGAN/BUSH.

THIS IS WHY WE SHOUT----SHAKE THAT RACE AND CLASS BALTIMORE AND COME TOGETHER AS A 99% VS 1%---WE CANNOT DO THAT IF WE DO NOT BUILD REAL EQUAL RIGHTS AND OPPORTUNITY FOR 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE BLACK, WHITE, AND BROWN CITIZENS.





It Will Take More Than Single-Payer to Make Baltimore Healthy


More than lack of access to health care, the ongoing legacies of Jim Crow diminish African Americans’ health.

Jim Grossfeld
November 20, 2017

“See that over there?” I pull over to the curb and Glenn Ross points to a half-acre patch of weeds and tall grass wedged between a railroad bridge and a new East Baltimore elementary school, the first to be built in the neighborhood in more than 30 years.


“You’ve got the playground there and over there’s a brownfield”—the term for the sites where factories, refineries, and other businesses closed after poisoning the land and water beneath them.

“Trains used to leave coal there,” Ross says. “Then a truck repair shop opened up. The ground there is hard and black with oil. Why would you ever build a school next to a contaminated site?”


A burly Vietnam vet and one of Baltimore’s most seasoned activists, Ross has been on the front lines of dozens of the battles facing the city’s African American community, which today makes up two-thirds of Baltimore’s 620,000 residents. Now his priority is cleaning up the brownfields and dumps that pockmark the city’s black neighborhoods, exposing the families living in them to a laundry list of toxins that have been linked to cancer and other diseases.


On the drive back to his house, we pass some of the city’s 17,000 boarded-up houses, a storefront with whitewashed windows that was once the neighborhood’s supermarket, and a building peppered with bullet holes—no particular reason why, just a calling card left by one of the city’s drug gangs.


By the latest estimates, more than 28 percent of African Americans in the city live below the poverty line.Images like these have long made Baltimore a poster child for the urban poverty that results from institutional racism—even more so after the April 2015 death of Freddie Gray and the protests that followed. By the latest estimates, more than 28 percent of African Americans in the city live below the poverty line. The poverty rate for Baltimore households headed by women—the vast majority of whom are African American—is far higher, 41 percent.


These numbers provide as much insight into the health crisis facing African American neighborhoods as MRIs or CT scans of the individuals living within them. Maybe more. Because poverty—and the racism that gave rise to it—is the overarching reason why the life expectancy in 14 of Baltimore’s predominantly African American neighborhoods is now lower than North Korea’s.


One of those neighborhoods is the one where Glenn Ross lives, Madison/Eastend, which is 90 percent African American and where the average life expectancy is not quite 69 years. Life expectancy in the nearby Baltimore neighborhood of Medfield/Hampden/Woodberry/Remington, which is 78 percent white, is 76.5 years.


The reasons for this disparity aren’t hard to find. Compared with Medfield/Hampden/Woodberry/Remington, Ross’s neighborhood of Madison/Eastend has a homicide rate nearly 12 times higher, a cancer mortality rate 66 percent higher, and an AIDS mortality rate more than 12 times higher.


The term used to describe the factors that are responsible for such disparities is “determinants of health.” Some are the ones Ross talked about: toxins, housing, access to food, violence, and drugs. But there are others, too: education, unemployment, the number and quality of neighborhood parks, the rat population, and anything else that impacts the health of the community as a whole. And, of course, there’s the availability of health insurance and access to care. The most important of all, right? Well, no. It’s complicated.


“THERE'S A DIFFERENCE between health care, which is critically important, and the array of social, economic, and environmental determinants of health,” says Dr. Brian Smedley, co-founder and executive director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity. “In fact, the health of populations is only minimally affected by health care. Some estimates are that only 20 percent [of a population’s health] can be explained by access and the quality of care.”


The Baltimore City Health Department (BCHD) estimate is less generous. In its report “Healthy Baltimore 2020: A Blueprint for Health,” BCHD points out that although 97 percent of health-care dollars are spent on the health-care system, only 10 percent of what determines life expectancy actually happens “within the four walls of a clinic.” The other 90 percent is decided upstream, where people live, work, go to school, and spend their free time.


 All of this says something about having a single-payer or a Medicare-for-all system (slogans aside, they’re really not the same thing). It’s that while either would be a vast improvement over the insurance system we have now, neither would have a profound impact on the health crisis facing African Americans.


Some who “argue that we need to expand access to health insurance tend to also believe that if we achieve universal coverage, then racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic health care and status gaps will close,” Smedley says. “That’s simply not the case.”
What’s sending black people in Baltimore to an early grave isn’t that America lacks a Canadian-style health-care system. It’s the legacy of Jim Crow.



“BLACKS SHOULD BE quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidence of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighborhoods, and to protect property values among the White majority.” They could be words in South Africa’s Pass Laws, but they come from the text of a 1911 Baltimore city ordinance.


The ordinance was eventually overturned, but for all the difference that made, it may as well have stayed on the books. Baltimore whites had long believed segregation was fundamental to protecting themselves from the crime, “loose morals,” and illness that were presumably endemic to African Americans. City ordinance or not, Baltimore lenders, mortgage bankers, and real-estate interests conspired in plain view to keep black families from moving into white neighborhoods.



Jim Grossfeld

On the Front Lines: Glenn Ross is campaigning to raise awareness and clean up the brownfields that abound in black Baltimore.


There was never any ambiguity about whether African Americans could get loans to buy houses in the city’s white neighborhoods, or any doubt that anyone who attempted to sell or rent to blacks would be penalized for it. In 1934, Baltimore’s homegrown segregationists gained a powerful new ally with the creation of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), one of the crown jewels of the New Deal, which, as a matter of policy, denied mortgage insurance to black people. The feds also established the practice of redlining, literally marking off African American neighborhoods on maps and designating those who lived within them, regardless of their income, as credit risks. At the same time, the FHA was backing loans for whites—essentially underwriting their exodus from the city.

DID THE FEDERAL FHA PROGRAM DO THOSE REDLINING AND SEGREGATION STATUS OR DID LOCAL POWER STAGE THIS----THE FHA DID GREAT THINGS FOR BOTH BLACK AND WHITE 99% ----IT WAS HOW IT WAS IMPLEMENTED IN EACH STATE.



In his 2009 book, Infectious Fear: Politics, Disease, and the Health Effects of Segregation, Samuel Kelton Roberts Jr., director of Columbia University’s Institute for Research in African American Studies, provides a chilling account of how housing discrimination hastened the spread of tuberculosis in Baltimore’s African American community beginning in the early 1900s.


Roberts points out that even though African Americans made up one-fifth of Baltimore’s population, they lived on only 2 percent of its residential property and often paid rents that averaged three times higher than what whites paid for similar homes. How could they afford it? Most couldn’t. Given the poverty wages earned by most black workers, the only way many could make the rent was to take in tenants of their own. For their part, landlords had little compunction about failing to provide even rudimentary maintenance, leaving homes damp, stifling, and reeking of decay and rot. City officials provided only mediocre public services, if any. The impact on black families was devastating. In his book Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City, longtime Baltimore journalist Antero Pietila points out that when Baltimore’s citywide TB rate climbed to 132 cases per 100,000 people, in one black neighborhood it had surged to 958 cases per 100,000 people. The sight of fatigued black men, women, and children suffering from chills, fever, and coughing up blood or sputum wasn’t uncommon.



While redlining didn’t create TB, it was responsible for its phenomenal spread in Baltimore’s African American community


While redlining didn’t create TB, it was responsible for its phenomenal spread in Baltimore’s African American community, and the illness and death that followed. A century later, redlining continues to determine the health of the city’s black neighborhoods.



Today, according to a survey by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED, known today as Prosperity Now), 32 percent of black Baltimore households have no household net worth at all, and 67 percent have so meager a level of liquid savings that they could meet their basic expenses for no more than three months if they had a medical emergency or suffered a job loss.



The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and CFED report that if current trends continue, the average black household in the United States will need 228 years to accumulate as much wealth as their white counterparts have now. Wealth inequality, rooted in segregation, has made poverty an enduring fact of life in Baltimore. It’s the common thread to the social determinants that are robbing African Americans of their health.


WHEN CNN COVERS the health impact of the criminal justice system on the African American community, it usually begins and ends with an account of the police killing a black person. If there’s video, all the better. But police violence is a piece of a much bigger story: how the justice system undermines the health of the entire African American community.



Ralikh Hayes has been an organizer since his teens in campaigns to change the city’s criminal justice system. Ask him about the health of Black Baltimoreans and he’ll tell you that the issue he’s concerned with isn’t whether something he’s exposed to now will kill him in 20 years. It’s simply not getting shot.



“It’s a public health issue that young black people don’t think they’re going to make it to 21, 23, 25. The fact that I turned 23 is considered a milestone in the community,” he says. “People don’t think their life expectancy is that long.”


Jim GrossfeldMustafa Santiago Ali: The chronic disinvestment in black communities has created literally toxic environments.


The experience of violence and degradation in black America, of course, has all too commonly come under the color of law. Police violence and abuse are a fundamental cause of the stress and trauma suffered by black people. Two-thirds of young African Americans say that they or someone they know has experienced violence or harassment at the hands of the police, according to a 2016 GenForward poll. Thirty percent of black men say they experienced it themselves. And hearing, reading, or seeing news coverage of police violence and harassment of black people can activate what psychologists call “racial trauma,” triggering memories of police harassment and other instances of racism that they and the people they know have experienced. Almost one in ten black Americans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.


“I'D GO THERE IF I had an accident, but not if I had a choice,” he says. “He” is a retired Baltimore steelworker who’s shy about being quoted by name. “There” is Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital. Together with the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic, Hopkins is part of the trinity of top-ranked U.S. hospitals—a latter-day Lourdes to which sick people from around the world beat a path, hoping to find cures they’ll find nowhere else. But in Baltimore’s African American community, the hospital has a different reputation.


“They treat black people with disrespect,” he adds. “Whites get much better care.”



It’s a view shared by many African Americans. Many grew up having heard the story that if they played too close to Hopkins they might get snatched off the street for medical experiments. In their 2013 book Lead Wars, historians David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz revealed that as late as the 1990s researchers affiliated with Hopkins conducted a study that exposed children, most of them African American, to dangerously high amounts of lead.



One institution better able to address some health determinants than a hospital is the community health center. Today, there are 9,800 such centers (their number augmented over the past decade by the $11 billion included in the Affordable Care Act for that purpose), which provide care to 24 million low-income Americans, two-thirds of them minority. Because they’re small, located near their patients, culturally compatible, and often work with community leaders to address some of their patients’ non-clinical problems—access to healthy food, for example—they fill needs that most hospitals either don’t or can’t.


To what extent, though, does racism still affect the medical system at large? In 2015, The Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics reported on the findings of a study led by Dr. Monika Goyal of Children’s National Health System and Dr. Nathan Kuppermann and Sean Cleary of George Washington University. They found that “[b]lack children are less likely [than white children] to receive any pain medication for moderate pain and less likely to receive opioids for severe pain, suggesting a different threshold for treatment.”



An older study—but one that nonetheless came 36 years after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act—was published in 2000 in Social Science and Medicine. In it, Michelle van Ryn of the Mayo Clinic and Jane Burke of the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine examined 842 post-angiogram encounters between physicians and their patients. They found that “lower [socioeconomic status] African Americans consulting a cardiologist are more likely than affluent Whites to be perceived as: lacking intelligence; lacking self-control; irrational; unlikely to have significant career demands; at risk for inadequate social support; unlikely to desire a physically active lifestyle; at risk for substance abuse; and likely to be noncompliant with cardiac rehabilitation.” 


One change that would likely have a positive impact on the quality of health care provided to African Americans would be an increase in the number of black doctors. It’s not only a matter of African Americans feeling more comfortable having a black doctor; it’s that African American doctors may be more willing to see low-income—disproportionately minority—patients. In a 2015 New England Journal of Medicine article, Dr. David Ansell and Dr. Edwin McDonald wrote, “Black medical students are more than twice as likely as white students to express a desire to care for underserved communities of color. Our inability to recruit black men into medicine is alarming, given the urgency of racial health care disparities in the United States.”


Tracy PerkinsThe Neighborhood Vista: Industry and fuel storage bins abut a Baltimore residential street.



By some measures, only about 5 percent of practicing physicians are black, and there’s little evidence that number is going to grow. In 2004, medical school enrollment for African American students was 7.4 percent, but by 2011 it dropped to 7 percent.


The reasons why have been talked over (and over) for years: Throughout K–12, schools aren’t identifying and encouraging African American students who may have an interest in medicine; schools attended by black children don’t have the same resources to teach science that predominantly white schools do; the shortage of black physicians means there are few role models; many black college graduates are unprepared to apply to medical school; and, of course, black students and their families can’t afford the staggering price of studying medicine.


For generations, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) like Howard University in Washington, D.C., and Meharry Medical College in Nashville trained the lion’s share of America’s black physicians. They’ve also struggled to survive financially. Now, with Donald Trump suggesting that federal support for them may be unconstitutional, HBCUs could be facing their toughest times ever.



One group working to counteract these trends is White Coats 4 Black Lives, or WC4BL, a national organization of medical students whose mission is “to eliminate racial bias in the practice of medicine and recognize racism as a threat to the health and well-being of people of color.” With 54 active chapters at medical schools across the nation, WC4BL says its primary goal, in the spirit of Black Lives Matter, is to put medicine’s racial disparities on the front burner.



Black Lives Matter may be providing a template for dealing with all the systemic issues that threaten and thwart black lives.Indeed, Black Lives Matter may be providing a template for dealing with all the systemic issues that threaten and thwart black lives. Earlier this year, Mustafa Santiago Ali, a former EPA senior advisor for environmental justice and community revitalization, became the senior vice president of climate, environmental justice and community revitalization at the Hip Hop Caucus. He sees a coming-together of discrete movements to improve African Americans’ lives. “The environmental justice side, the public health side, and Black Lives Matter, all these various organizations are engaged in Flint [Michigan] and understand that what’s happening there and other communities is a sign of the disinvestment that’s been happening there for decades—even longer than decades,” he says.



“There’s the Band-Aid approach, which has its relevancy, which is just focusing on the pipes and the water,” he says. “And then there’s the broader construct of making sure there’s green housing, making sure that transportation routes are beneficial to the community, utilizing job training programs, creating small anchor institutions.”



And health insurance? While it’s important, it’s no substitute for creating new clinics that provide easy access to care. Pointing to the success of community health centers that today meet the needs of more than 24 million patients in poor communities, Ali says, “We could turn brownfields into health fields by cleaning up contaminated sites and placing health-care facilities there.”


SINCE IT HAD TAKEN a couple of weeks to arrange the interview, I was thrilled to finally have him on the phone. He was one of the country’s strongest advocates for single-payer—he wished to remain anonymous—but what I wanted to talk about with him that afternoon was racial health disparities. The responses I got from him didn’t say as much about the implications of, say, food deserts or the shortage of African American doctors as they did about the current politics of much of the left. The answer to all of my questions was single-payer.


It took a lot of prodding but eventually he explained why.


“The conversation always has to be broader than [racial] disparities,” he said. “When you look at America’s will to end poverty, it was highest during the Great Depression, when the images of most poor people were white.”



Despite the fact that the health crisis facing African Americans has less to do with access to insurance than with those other social determinants, the idea that health is rationed not only by class but by race hasn’t commonly been part of the current argument for universal coverage. That’s partly the result of political calculation. Talking about black people suffering poor health more and dying sooner isn’t likely the most persuasive argument for many white voters. When Republicans sought to repeal the Affordable Care Act, one reason they failed is that Medicaid had acquired so many white recipients (by virtue of both the ACA’s raising the income eligibility threshold and the downward mobility of the white working class) that it had become impossible for Republicans to get away with deriding it as a giveaway to blacks.



But progressives should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. They can advocate universal coverage and speak out about the health crisis that’s engulfed black America. It really isn’t that heavy a lift—unless they’ve bought the argument that talking about issues that have a unique impact on minorities is “playing identity politics.”



Winning universal access to health care, as challenging as it is worthwhile, will not in itself create health equity across the country’s racial lines. That’s the more fundamental challenge—and it’s every bit as urgent as winning universal health care. By the metric of lives cut short, it’s a good deal more urgent—and high time that progressives treat it that way.  


0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Cindy Walsh is a lifelong political activist and academic living in Baltimore, Maryland.

    Archives

    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012

    Categories

    All
    2014 Economic Crash
    21st Century Economy
    Affordable Care Act
    Affordable Care Act
    Alec
    Americorp/VISTA
    Anthony Brown
    Anthony Brown
    Anti Incumbant
    Anti-incumbant
    Anti Incumbent
    Anti Incumbent
    Attacking The Post Office Union
    Baltimore And Cronyism
    Baltimore Board Of Estimates
    Baltimore Board Of Estimates
    Baltimore Development Corp
    Baltimore Development Corp
    Baltimore Recall/Retroactive Term Limits
    Bank Fraud
    Bank Fraud
    Bank Of America
    Bank Settlement
    Bank-settlement
    B Corporations
    Bgeexelon Mergerf59060c411
    Brookings Institution
    Business Tax Credits
    California Charter Expansion
    Cardin
    Career Colleges
    Career Colleges Replacing Union Apprenticeships
    Charters
    Charter School
    Collection Agencies
    Common Core
    Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
    Consumer-financial-protection-bureau
    Corporate Media
    Corporate-media
    Corporate Oversight
    Corporate-oversight
    Corporate Politicians
    Corporate-politicians
    Corporate Rule
    Corporate-rule
    Corporate Taxes
    Corporate-taxes
    Corporate Tax Reform
    Corporatizing Us Universities
    Cost-benefit-analysis
    Credit Crisis
    Credit-crisis
    Cummings
    Department Of Education
    Department Of Justice
    Department-of-justice
    Derivatives Reform
    Development
    Dismantling Public Justice
    Dodd Frank
    Doddfrankbba4ff090a
    Doug Gansler
    Doug-gansler
    Ebdi
    Education Funding
    Education Reform
    Edwards
    Election Reform
    Election-reform
    Elections
    Emigration
    Energy-sector-consolidation-in-maryland
    Enterprise Zones
    Equal Access
    Estate Taxes
    European Crisis
    Expanded And Improved Medicare For All
    Expanded-and-improved-medicare-for-all
    Failure To Prosecute
    Failure-to-prosecute
    Fair
    Fair And Balanced Elections
    Fair-and-balanced-elections
    Farm Bill
    Federal Election Commissionelection Violationsmaryland
    Federal Election Commissionelection Violationsmarylandd20a348918
    Federal-emergency-management-agency-fema
    Federal Reserve
    Financial Reform Bill
    Food Safety Not In Tpp
    For Profit Education
    Forprofit-education
    Fracking
    Fraud
    Freedom Of Press And Speech
    Frosh
    Gambling In Marylandbaltimore8dbce1f7d2
    Granting Agencies
    Greening Fraud
    Gun Control Policy
    Healthcare For All
    Healthcare-for-all
    Health Enterprise Zones
    High Speed Rail
    Hoyer
    Imf
    Immigration
    Incarceration Bubble
    Incumbent
    Incumbents
    Innovation Centers
    Insurance Industry Leverage And Fraud
    International Criminal Court
    International Trade Deals
    International-trade-deals
    Jack Young
    Jack-young
    Johns Hopkins
    Johns-hopkins
    Johns Hopkins Medical Systems
    Johns-hopkins-medical-systems
    Kaliope Parthemos
    Labor And Justice Law Under Attack
    Labor And Wages
    Lehmann Brothers
    Living Wageunionspolitical Action0e39f5c885
    Maggie McIntosh
    Maggie-mcintosh
    Martin O'Malley
    Martin O'Malley
    Martin-omalley
    Martin-omalley8ecd6b6eb0
    Maryland Health Co Ops
    Maryland-health-co-ops
    Maryland-health-co-ops1f77692967
    Maryland Health Coopsccd73554da
    Maryland Judiciary
    Marylandnonprofits
    Maryland Non Profits
    Maryland Nonprofits2509c2ca2c
    Maryland Public Service Commission
    Maryland State Bar Association
    Md Credit Bondleverage Debt441d7f3605
    Media
    Media Bias
    Media-bias
    Medicaremedicaid
    Medicaremedicaid8416fd8754
    Mental Health Issues
    Mental-health-issues
    Mers Fraud
    Mikulski
    Military Privatization
    Minority Unemploymentunion And Labor Wagebaltimore Board Of Estimates4acb15e7fa
    Municipal Debt Fraud
    Ndaa-indefinite-detention
    Ndaaindefinite Detentiond65cc4283d
    Net Neutrality
    New Economy
    New-economy
    Ngo
    Non Profit To Profit
    Nonprofit To Profitb2d6cb4b41
    Nsa
    O'Malley
    Odette Ramos
    Omalley
    O'Malley
    Open Meetings
    Osha
    Patronage
    Pension-benefit-guaranty-corp
    Pension Funds
    Pension-funds
    Police Abuse
    Private-and-public-pension-fraud
    Private Health Systemsentitlementsprofits Over People
    Private Health Systemsentitlementsprofits Over People6541f468ae
    Private Non Profits
    Private-non-profits
    Private Nonprofits50b33fd8c2
    Privatizing Education
    Privatizing Government Assets
    Privatizing-the-veterans-admin-va
    Privitizing Public Education
    Progressive Policy
    Progressive Taxes Replace Regressive Policy
    Protections Of The People
    Protections-of-the-people
    Public Education
    Public Funding Of Private Universities
    Public Housing Privatization
    Public-libraries-privatized-or-closed
    Public Private Partnerships
    Public-private-partnerships
    Public Transportation Privatization
    Public Utilities
    Rapid Bus Network
    Rawlings Blake
    Rawlings-blake
    Rawlingsblake1640055471
    Real Progressives
    Reit-real-estate-investment-trusts
    Reitreal Estate Investment Trustsa1a18ad402
    Repatriation Taxes
    Rule Of Law
    Rule-of-law
    Ruppersberger
    SAIC AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
    Sarbanes
    S Corp Taxes
    Selling Public Datapersonal Privacy
    Smart Meters
    Snowden
    Social Security
    Sovereign Debt Fraudsubprime Mortgage Fraudmortgage Fraud Settlement
    Sovereign Debt Fraudsubprime Mortgage Fraudmortgage Fraud Settlement0d62c56e69
    Statistics As Spin
    Statistics-as-spin
    Student-corps
    Subprime Mortgage Fraud
    Subprime-mortgage-fraud
    Surveillance And Security
    Sustainability
    Teachers
    Teachers Unions2bc448afc8
    Teach For America
    Teach For America
    Technology Parks
    Third Way Democrats/new Economy/public Union Employees/public Private Patnerships/government Fraud And Corruption
    Third Way Democratsnew Economypublic Union Employeespublic Private Patnershipsgovernment Fraud And Corruption
    Third-way-democratsnew-economypublic-union-employeespublic-private-patnershipsgovernment-fraud-and-corruptionc10a007aee
    Third Way/neo Liberals
    Third-wayneo-liberals
    Third-wayneo-liberals5e1e6d4716
    Third Wayneoliberals7286dda6aa
    Tifcorporate Tax Breaks2d87bba974
    Tpp
    Transportation Inequity In Maryland
    Union Busting
    Unionbusting0858fddb8b
    Unions
    Unionsthird Waypost Officealec3c887e7815
    Universities
    Unreliable Polling
    Unreliable-polling
    Van Hollen
    Van-hollen
    VEOLA Environment -privatization Of Public Water
    Veterans
    War Against Women And Children
    War-against-women-and-children
    Youth Works

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.