Racism A Public Health Crisis According To House Resolution 78

ATLANTA — State Rep. Sandra Scott on Monday introduced a resolution declaring racism a health crisis.

Georgia House Resolution 78 attributes, among other things, a history of violent encounters with police and systemic health inequity that exists even amid a deadly global pandemic as cause for crisis among minorities in general and Black people in particular.

“Racism and health are tied together on many different fronts: where we live, go to school, the air we breathe, our income, wealth, health care and much more,” Scott said in a statement. “It is time for Black and brown people to stand up, speak out and demand better care in all areas of our life.”

The resolution cites the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the American College of Physicians, and the American Academy of Pediatricians which have each identified racism as a public health issue and called on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies to the public health effects caused by racism.

H.R. 78 notes that racial health disparities often are linked to issues such as lack of health insurance and inadequate access to health care.

Among the disparities the resolution calls out, it states that “Black women die from pregnancy and childbirth at three to four times the rate of white women, and Black children are more than twice as likely to have asthma as white children,” and “Black people are five times more likely than white people to be killed by police shootings while unarmed.”

Scott and her Democratic co-sponsors, including Kim Schofield (Atlanta), Carolyn Hugley (Columbus), Al Williams (Midway), Calvin Smyre (Columbus), and Billy Mitchell (Stone Mountain), want to use the resolution to springboard a statewide study into ways to curb the affects of systemic racism on health.

“Declaring racism a public health crisis is just the first step,” Scott said. “We also need Georgia’s public health department and other state agencies to collect and analyze data on health outcomes by race, develop plans to tackle racial inequities and engage communities in developing solutions to the problem.”

Click here for more information on H.R. 78, and to read the resolution.