National Public Health Week

The first week of April is celebrated by the American Public Health Association and others as National Public Health Week. Public health is defined as protecting the health of people and the communities where they live, learn, work, and play. But not everyone in America gets to experience public health equally. Those in the public health field often talk about the social determinants of health, which are non-medical factors that affect how healthy we are, such as:

• Do I live in an area with clean air?
• Do I live in a house that is safe and free of health hazards like mold or lead paint?
• Do I have access to fresh and nutritious food (that I can afford)?
• Can I move around my neighborhood safely?

Each one of these factors manifests differently in neighborhoods across America because of structural racism. Think about practices like redlining, discriminatory lending, over policing and police brutality, decisions about where to build infrastructure and which communities to invest in. For the majority of our country’s history, these decisions have been made by white people and white institutions to the detriment of people of color.

As a result of structural racism, there is a long list of disparities in health outcomes between white people and people of color. Here’s one example from Minnesota: since 2010, rates of death from asthma have been 1.3 to 3 times higher for Black Minnesotans compared to white Minnesotans, and Native American children and adults in Minnesota are the least likely among all groups to have optimal asthma control. Asthma is influenced by environmental factors like air pollution, proximity to highways, and poor housing quality. You can find more Minnesota Healthy Housing Facts at nchh.org/resource-library/fact-sheet_state-healthy-housing_mn.pdf.

To understand more about the connection between public health and racism, try the following resources: 

• Racial Disparities in Health Outcomes: a write up from Tulane University. 
• Structural Racism is a Public Health Crisis: Impact on the Black Community: a policy statement from the American Public Health Association.