Posts Tagged ‘ethnicity’
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhumane”*…
We tend to encounter data about public health in the form of averages over the population as a whole. But as a recent study published in The Lancet painfully demonstrates, the underlying reality is much more complicated– and alarming…
The differences in U.S. life expectancy are so large it’s as if the population lives in separate Americas instead of one.
Nearly two decades ago, a team of researchers published the landmark “Eight Americas” study, which examined drivers of U.S. health inequities between 1982 and 2001 by dividing the U.S. population into groups based on geography, race, income, and other factors.
A new research study, published this month by the University of Washington and the Council on Foreign Relations, revisits that landmark research project, adding two new “Americas” to account for Latino populations.
This new study finds that U.S. life expectancy disparities have grown over the last two decades between 2001 and 2021, with the differences between the best and worst of those “Americas” increasing from 12.6 years in 2000 to 20.4 years in 2021. COVID-19 exacerbated this divide, but gaps in longevity had already been growing before the pandemic hit…
“The 10 Americas: How Geography, Race, and Income Shape U.S. Life Expectancy,” from @thinkglobalhealth.org. Both this summary article and the underlying paper are eminently worth reading in full.
* Martin Luther King, Jr.
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As we unpack unfairness, we might send preventative birthday greetings to Ernst Wynder; he was born on this date in 1922. An epidemiologist and public health researcher, he is best remembered for his pioneering work in identifying the link (in 1950) between smoking and lung cancer.
Wynder devoted his career to the study and prevention of cancer and chronic disease, publishing hundreds of scientific papers. Through the 1950s and 1960s, he worked at Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. In 1969, he founded the American Health Foundation. In 1972, he founded the academic journal Preventive Medicine and served as the founding editor.
“Society is unity in diversity”*…
In less than one year, the 2020 census will record just how much more racially diverse the nation has become, continuing the “diversity explosion” that punctuated the results of the 2010 census. While less authoritative than the once-a-decade national headcount, recently released U.S. Census Bureau estimates for 2018 make plain that racial minority populations—especially Hispanic, Asian and black Americans—continue to expand, leaving fewer parts of the country untouched by diversity…
From Brookings, a pre-2020 census look at the wide dispersal of the nation’s Hispanic, Asian and black populations: Six maps that reveal America’s expanding diversity.
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As we delight in difference, we might recall that it was on this date in 1814 that then 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key wrote “The Defense of Fort M’Henry,” a poem– which provided the lyrics for the U.S. national anthem– in which he described the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships of the Royal Navy in Baltimore Harbor during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. Key was inspired by the large U.S. flag, with 15 stars and 15 stripes, known as the Star-Spangled Banner, flying triumphantly above the fort during the U.S. victory.
Indeed, he wrote lyrics beyond those most of us have heard: a pro-slavery, anti-abolitionist campaigner, Key wrote a (now mostly omitted) third stanza that promises that “No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.”
Roots…
click here or on the image above
From Bloomberg, an interactive graphic that allows readers to see and compare the heritages (as reported in the 2010 Census) of residents of the U.S. as whole and of each of the nation’s 3,143 counties.
(The example above was pulled at random… One notes that a “German heritage vs Mexican heritage” sort yields Maricopa County, Arizona– the precinct policed by brown-skin-busting, sexual-abuse-ignoring, vendetta-prosecuting “Sheriff Joe” Arpaio, the subject of a current Justice Department investigation– as the county in the U.S. with the most self-identified citizens of German heritage. Chillingly weird.)
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As we wonder if the “melting pot” has become a “fondue pot,” we might spare a thought for the first Mississippi field secretary of the NAACP, Medgar Evers; he was assassinated on this date in 1963 by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens’ Council.
A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers’ blood.
A finger fired the trigger to his name.
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man’s brain
But he can’t be blamed
He’s only a pawn in their game.
– Bob Dylan, ‘Only a Pawn in Their Game’
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