Black and Indigenous individuals as well as people of color (BIPOC) are dying from COVID-19 at nearly three times the rate of white people. 

The statistic is verified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and alarming enough for President Joe Biden to take notice. A Jan. 21 executive order affirmed the creation of a COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, which aims to combat decreased vaccination rates and disproportionate COVID-19 related cases and deaths evident within minority communities. A Feb. 10 White House press briefing states that these inequities are a byproduct of factors like “race, ethnicity, geography, disability, sexual orientation (and) gender identity” that the task force seeks to prioritize in providing accessibility to the Pfizer, Moderna and recently approved Johnson and Johnson vaccine variants. 

“COVID-19 essentially does not discriminate,” said Angel Miles Nash, an assistant professor in Chapman University’s Atallah College of Educational Studies who has been researching the impact of COVID-19 on educational districts in minority communities. “So, in many ways, your socioeconomic status will determine what you have access to.” 

This sentiment was reiterated at a Feb. 24 virtual panel titled “Black Health Care: Past and Present,” hosted by both the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and the Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences. As part of university programming in honor of Black History Month, Charissa Threat, an associate professor of history at Chapman, moderated the event while panelists discussed the history of institutionalized racism within the medical field and the external factors that put marginalized communities at greater risk for contracting COVID-19.

“Where we are born, where we are raised, the neighborhoods, the schools that we go to — all of those things have such a huge impact on health before anybody even gets sick,” Tamarra Jones, the manager of the Health Promotion and Community Planning division of the Orange County Healthcare Agency, said during the event. “We have to really have an honest discussion regarding social determinants regarding health inequities and regarding the disproportionate impact of chronic disease on our communities.”

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that, as of 2019, a historical low of 18.8% of Black individuals in the U.S. live under the poverty line, yet this percentage still indicates a jarring disparity considering Black people only represent about 13.4% of the total U.S. population. Panelist Jason Douglas, an assistant professor within the Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences, told The Panther that one of the largest setbacks in these underserved communities of color is lack of transportation. There’s less of a willingness to use public transportation to reach vaccination sites during the ongoing pandemic, he said.

Coupled with that inaccessibility, Threat addressed the legacy of Black and brown people being devalued by medical officials and their bodies utilized for experimentation to segue into discussing the origins of BIPOC mistrust in the medical community. One prime example of such experimentation included the Tuskegee Study, which upon its details being released, is estimated to have lowered the life expectancy of Black men by up to 1.4 years.

“This mistrust of — for practical purposes — a largely white health care system that’s caring for non-white patients goes back even post-slavery to the Jim Crow days when Black people really couldn’t trust their white counterparts because they were viewed much more negatively in what they did,” Lawrence Brown, a panelist and vice provost for Academic Administration, said at the event.

The nation’s population of citizens at least 65 years old were the primary recipients in the initial phase of COVID-19 vaccinations. This demographic is more heavily white than other age groups. However, CDC demographic data of COVID-19 vaccine recipients as of Feb. 27 shows that the Black community still lags behind other demographics in the amount of individuals who have received their allotted doses — signifying interplay of other external factors than just population disparity.

According to The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on public health, of the 34 states currently releasing a breakdown of vaccination data by race and ethnicity, a “consistent pattern” exists of inequitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for eligible Black and Hispanic individuals.  

“What we’re seeing is a much higher vaccination rate within our white and Asian communities in California,” Douglas told The Panther. “Conversely, we are seeing lower vaccination rates in Black and Latinx communities, which has only been compounded by vaccine line-cutters taking appointments that were reserved for Black and Latinx residents.”

Douglas was granted funding from Chapman’s Office of Research, through a COVID-19 Rapid Response Research Funding initiative in March 2020, to examine inequitable resource access for minority communities during the pandemic. Grants between $5,000 to $15,000 were awarded to full-time faculty with the assistance of the Kay Family Foundation.

From applying for the grant to research execution, Douglas’ research was a collaborative effort with four other members of Chapman faculty and staff: Miles Nash, Brown, Chair of the Department of Physical Therapy Emmanuel John and Georgiana Bostean, an associate professor of environmental science, health and policy. One project to come out of the grant focused on treatment resource disparities between minority and white communities from before the start of the pandemic in November 2019 to its peak in April 2020, using COVID-19 hotspot New York City as the basis of analysis.

“What was happening in New York and the rapid response that they were implementing there mirrored what was coming down the pipeline for other districts as COVID-19 began to make its way across the country,” Miles Nash told The Panther.

They found that the average amount of licensed hospital beds allotted per 1,000 patients in majority white communities increased from an average of 69.5 in November 2019 to 75.5 in April 2020. By contrast, Black and Hispanic or Latinx individuals on average filled eight beds per 1,000 people, which only increased to 10.1.

“These treatment resource disparities are largely a function of systemic racism,” Douglas said. “My question is, why weren’t those resources available to begin with — never mind COVID-19?”