HELEN News

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 14, 2020   CONTACT Dylan Opalich   Chairman Neal and Ways and Means Committee Democrats Release Report Examining Longstanding Inequities in American Health System   “Left Out: Barriers to Health Equity for Rural and Underserved Communities” presents an honest, holistic analysis of the many cross-sector and historically rooted challenges facing residents of underserved communities   SPRINGFIELD, MA – Today, House Ways and Means Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-MA) released a staff report, titled “Left Out: Barriers to Health Equity for Rural and Underserved Communities” that analyzes the barriers to health care in…

In 1966, Dr Martin Luther King Jr stated, “of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane”. These words remain ever true and relevant in our current climate of health care. The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially affected health care on a global scale, and has magnified the inequities in access to health care that existed before. This pandemic has highlighted the equity gap in outcomes for marginalised communities, specifically the Black community, as starkly shown by the disparate morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 in individuals from these communities compared with the majority white population. 1 Furthermore, obesity and its…

Why Is COVID-19 Killing So Many Black Americans? The answer, according to researchers, is racism. But the Black community is fighting back. By Andrea Collier | June 30, 2020 Print Bookmark COVID-19 threatens the health of Americans in a way that hasn’t happened since the Spanish Flu in 1919. At this writing, it has killed half a million people around the world—a quarter of whom were Americans. The virus brought the economy to its knees, with unemployment rates and business closings that look more like the Great Depression than a mere downturn. But the suffering inflicted by COVID-19 is not evenly distributed. Black folks (and Latinos) are more likely to contract COVID-19, less…

HHS Announces Partnership with Morehouse School of Medicine to Fight COVID-19 in Racial and Ethnic Minority and Vulnerable Communities $40 Million Initiative Will Help Communities Hardest Hit by the Pandemic The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Minority Health (OMH) announced the selection of the Morehouse School of Medicine as the awardee for a new $40 million initiative to fight COVID-19 in racial and ethnic minority, rural and socially vulnerable communities. The Morehouse School of Medicine will enter into a cooperative agreement with OMH to lead the initiative to coordinate a strategic network of national, state, territorial, tribal and local organizations to…

What Americans Can Do to Address Systemic Racism and Achieve Health Equity June 11th, 2020  I can’t breathe! This has become an all too familiar cry for many African Americans who everyday struggle to breathe in a society suffocated by systemic racism and entrenched inequities. They struggle to live in a society that has intentionally erected barrier after barrier intended to weaken their bodies and hasten their deaths. What we have is the perfect storm for a disaster—a serious health crisis, an inequitable method of health delivery, millions of uninsured and under-insured people, an uneven and politically charged approach to dealing with the pandemic, police…