The pandemic has struck especially hard the poor and people of color across the United States and in Virginia. One recent study with ties to the University of Richmond has reinforced those findings.
“Redlining and Neighborhood Health” was reported today by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition with researchers from the University of Richmond Scholarship Lab and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Joseph J. Ziber School of Public Health. The study looks at maps compiled in the 1930s by the federal government that discriminated against Blacks in housing and other services, and how areas redlined at that time continue to experience higher rates of poverty and chronic diseases including diabetes, asthma and high blood pressure as well as lower life expectancy. Such factors place residents of these communities at a greater risk of more severe COVID-19 infections and death.
“The higher rates of COVID-19 infections and deaths in communities of color have been well documented, but this study gives us a deeper understanding of why,” says Jesse Van Tol, chief executive officer of the Washington, D.C.-based coalition. “Historical structural racism created economic and health disparities we see today. That’s an old problem, but the pandemic should be a wake-up call.”
The project has compiled maps of about 200 cities across the nation, including Richmond, and compares the original maps with contemporary census information and public health statistics.
The 1930s maps were the works of the federal Home Owners Loan Corporation, which assessed Richmond and other communities across the nation. Neighborhoods deemed as risks were delineated in red, hence the term “redlining.” The Digital Lab compiled an online database of the redlining records in Richmond that was made available in 2016.
“The calcification of inequalities across the landscape of American cities has many causes; not least of those causes is government policies and programs like the HOLC redlining survey that helped channel public and private resources to native-born, middle-class whites and away from immigrants, African Americans and other people of color, with, as the NCRC report and the mapping site we built with NCRC shows, enormous implications for health disparities today,” says the digital lab’s director, Robert K. Nelson, in a release.
The Virginia Department of Health’s COVID-19 update for Thursday showed 137,460 confirmed and probable coronavirus cases in the commonwealth. The breakdown by ethnicity, compared with an ethnicity's share of the state's overall population, is:
- 28% white (61% of the overall population of Virginia)
- 24% Latino (10% of state population)
- 20% Black (20% of state population)
- 3% Asian (7% of state population).
VDH reports that 22% of COVID-19 positive cases in the state were not identified by ethnicity. The remaining 3% of cases identified as Native American, two or more races or other.
CAPSULES
Health news in brief
- It’s time to get your flu shot. September and October are prime months for influenza vaccination, especially important this year as the coronavirus pandemic continues. Bon Secours Westchester Emergency Center is offering a drive-thru flu shot clinic at no charge from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, and again on Saturday, Oct. 10. There’s no mention of stickers for your “owie,” but there are goodie bags for the family and hourly prize drawings. Masks are required. There’s also a drive-thru clinic from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Oct. 3, at the Bon Secours Short Pump Emergency Center.
- Patient First says it’s offering Fast Track Flu Shots at its locations. It’s a walk-in, no-appointment-needed program, available 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day, with expedited registration. Free through your insurance, or $35 to $65 if you’re paying, depending on the vaccine that you choose.
- Virginia has a middling rank among its peers nationally when it comes to the state’s health system performance, according to an assessment from The Commonwealth Fund. The state was 25th overall out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, ranking high in prevention and treatment (No. 8), healthy lives (No. 18), and avoidable hospital use and cost (19). Virginia lagged in disparity (No. 45) and access and affordability (No. 26). The survey information did not take into account Medicaid expansion, which occurred in Virginia in 2019.
