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STATEMENT OF NEED
STATEMENT OF NEED: COVID-19 TAKING AIM AT THE BLACK COMMUNITY
“When White America gets a cold, Black America catches pneumonia.”
Unequal social determinants → Racial health disparities → Deadly outcomes …but why?
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Long, established distrust for the public health system
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Lack of healthcare access, proper education, diet, exercise and smoking cessation create preexisting conditions which supports the worst outcomes for COVID-19
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Black Americans often work in jobs that involve crowded conditions or high contact with other people
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Unvalidated but equally harmful, are rampant conspiracy theories that are being propagated around COVID-19
The conditions that thrust Black communities into a vulnerable state are rooted in a healthcare system that mirrors the systemic and structural inequalities in American society… they have led to racial disparities in morbidity and mortality rates from chronic illness for decades.
Since January 2020, COVID-19 has spread throughout the United States, and has devastated the Black community
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Black Americans represent 13.4% of the US population (or approximately 42M)
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Geographic areas with higher Black populations account for more than half of all COVID-19 cases, and almost 60% of deaths
1 AmfAR Study Shows Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on Black Americans. AmfAR, AmfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, 5 May 2020, www.amfar.org/amfAR-Study-Shows-Disproportionate-Impact-of-COVID-19-on-Black-Americans/.
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STATEMENT OF NEED: CRITICAL IMPACT OF ECONOMIES REOPENING
Pressure to open the economy before adequate testing and contact tracing
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The populations most vulnerable are now being put at a significantly higher risk
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Vaccines will most likely be unavailable at the earliest until summer 2021
STATEMENT OF NEED:
ADDRESSING THE PANDEMIC IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY
Prioritize COVID-19 testing, care and contact tracing to
our community’s most vulnerable
If we continue our current course, more than 200,000 Americans will die
and a large percentage in the Black community — U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), March 2020
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