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1. For your original comment, first, identify two health disparities in the United States that were discussed in the Unnatural Causes videos posted on Canvas. You can use any of the Unnatural Causes videos posted thus far in the semester.
Healthy People 2020 defines a health disparity as “a particular type of health difference that is closely linked with social, economic, and/or environmental disadvantage. Health disparities adversely affect groups of people who have systematically experienced greater obstacles to health based on their racial or ethnic group; religion; socioeconomic status; gender; age; mental health; cognitive, sensory, or physical disability; sexual orientation or gender identity; geographic location; or other characteristics historically linked to discrimination or exclusion”.
See: https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/about/foundation-health-measures/Disparities
2. Next, link what you learned about heath disparities from the “Unnatural Causes” videos to at least TWO news articles I posted on Canvas that highlight how pre-existing health disparities contributed to higher rates of death from Covid-19 among minority populations in the United States. If you use another source, you will not get creditfor the assignment.
3. Finally, discuss what we can and/or should do to help improve health outcomes in these communities, now and/or in the future. This can be as short as 2-3 sentences, or longer if you wish.
Your comments must include information that you learned from class. If you do not cite specific information from the chapter, articles, videos, or other course content, you will not get credit.
Use bold font to highlight your citations (e.g., articles, videos, etc.) and course concepts that you incorporate in your post. There is an automatic 10% deduction for not doing so.
CITE any articles, videos, etc. in the text of your original comment using APA format, which includes the last name of the author(s) and publication date, like this: Kaplan (2017) highlights….
Be sure to use the “Research and Writing Resources” (posted in Week 1 on Canvas) to find the correct APA citation format for your sources!
You do NOT need a separate references page for this assignment. Only in-text citations are needed. Future Canvas Discussion assignments will require a list of APA citations, but not the first co
links for videos and articles to use for this assignment and citation:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/we-need-help-say-latina-workers-hit-hard-by-pandemic-job-losses https://www.pbs.org/video/december-24-2020-pbs-newshour-full-episode-1608786002/https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mississippi-black-residents-are-desperate-get-vaccinated-they-face-access-n1256652
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavi…
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/24/994648555/avoid-medical-jargon-to-shrink-covid-health-disparities-say-patient-advocates
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Tuskegee Study Deters Some Black People From COVID-19 Vaccine : NPR
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The Coronavirus Crisis
In Tuskegee, Painful History Shadows Efforts To
Vaccinate African Americans
February 16, 2021 · 5:00 AM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
DEBBIE ELLIOTT
8-Minute Listen
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A participant in the Tuskegee Study in the 1930s. A lingering mistrust of the medical system among many Black people is
rooted in the infamous study.
National Archives
A lingering mistrust of the medical system makes some Black Americans more
hesitant to sign up for COVID-19 vaccines. It has played out in early data that show a
stark disparity in whom is getting shots in this country — more than 60% going to
white people, and less than 6% to African Americans. The mistrust is rooted in history,
including the infamous U.S. study of syphilis that left Black men in Tuskegee, Ala., to
suffer from the disease.
In Tuskegee today, that 20th century tragedy is still very relevant, according to nurse
Cheryl Owens, who grew up in the town. She’s been talking with friends and elderly
relatives who say they’re afraid to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
“So, I asked why?” she says. “And it was like, ‘Well, you remember that Tuskegee
syphilis study. That’s why.’ ”
Officially named the Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, the U.S. Public
Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, recruited hundreds of rural Black
men in 1932. The study offered free meals and checkups, but never explained that
participants would be human subjects in a study designed to withhold medical
treatment.
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“They had local leaders, church leaders, medical people to convince them to become
involved with the study,” says Owens, a nurse at the Central Alabama Veterans Health
Care System.
Tuskegee, now a city of about 8,000 people, has a storied African American history as
home to the Tuskegee Airmen. Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver
were educators here.
But the syphilis study also looms large in Tuskegee’s collective memory. Owens, who is
59, says she remembers hearing about it in elementary school, so she understands why
people in this nearly all-Black community are skeptical when the government says to
take a shot.
“They felt that the government really wanted to inject something in their bodies and
they were going to eventually die from that,” Owens explains.
To help dispel that notion, Owens penned an op-ed, published in the local newspaper
The Tuskegee News, including a photo of her getting a shot of the COVID-19 vaccine.
CORONAVIRUS UPDATES
Black People Are More Hesitant About A Vaccine. A Leading Nurse Wants To Change
That
SHOTS – HEALTH NEWS
The Black Doctors Working To Make Coronavirus Testing More Equitable
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Beverly Terry shortly after receiving her COVID-19 vaccination. Her husband, Douglas Terry, who is a Vietnam veteran, also
was vaccinated and plans on encouraging others to get their vaccine.
Debbie Elliott/NPR
Ramping up vaccine rollout
Heath officials are up against a powerful sentiment as they try to ramp up
vaccinations.
“I think a part of the challenge is that there’s still a lot of anxiety about the vaccine,”
says Amir Farooqi, director of the Central Alabama VA. “It’s unfortunate because it’s a
really great tool to help people protect their personal health as well as the public
health.”
The VA’s Tuskegee campus has repurposed a large auditorium into a vaccine clinic, to
allow for social distancing. Shots are given at one of four stations, partitioned off with
privacy curtains.
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Vietnam veteran Douglas Terry, 78, is relieved to be in the queue.
“With this there is hope,” he says.
Terry doesn’t even feel the stick when nurse Pamela Bell gives him his first jab.
“That’s what we want to hear,” she says, warning him that his arm might be a little
sore for a while.
Terry says he intends to spread the word that he and his wife got the shot.
“To give them courage to do it also,” he says.
That’s what VA officials want to hear. They’ve set up a selfie station at the clinic and
hand out stickers that proclaim, “I got vaccinated at the Central Alabama Veterans
HCS to protect our Veterans and Community.”
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Lucenia Williams Dunn is a former mayor of Tuskegee and now runs a local community development organization. She still
questions the rapid development of the vaccine and is not convinced to get it.
Debbie Elliott/NPR
‘Word of mouth will be key’
The VA’s infectious disease physician, Dr. April Truett, says that kind of word of
mouth will be key to overcoming reservations about the shot.
“The more people hear about the vaccine, the more they know someone else who’s
received the vaccine, the more they see how well they did, the more comfortable they
become with the vaccine,” she says.
In the broader community, elected officials in Tuskegee have also posted videos
getting shots, and some residents say they’ve gotten letters from the presidents of
historically Black universities encouraging inoculation.
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“It’s the biggest PR project to get Black people to take that vaccine,” says Lucenia
Williams Dunn, a former mayor of Tuskegee who now runs a local community
development organization. She’s 77 years old and has high blood pressure, but she’s
not convinced to get the vaccine.
Even though she’s been watching the pandemic’s devastating and disproportionate
impact on African Americans, she still questions the rapid development of the vaccine.
And then, there’s the history.
“You cannot separate the experience of the past with what we believe in the present,”
Dunn says. “People say, ‘well, you know, y’all ought not be worried about that syphilis
study.’ Yeah, we do, because it’s part of our experience.”
SHOTS – HEALTH NEWS
Mistrust And Lack Of Genetic Diversity Slow Gains In Precision Medicine
SHOTS – HEALTH NEWS
Troubling History In Medical Research Still Fresh For Black Americans
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Cheryl Owens is a nurse at the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System.
Via Cheryl Owens
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Descendants of men involved in Tuskegee study react
The vaccine rollout has sparked a conversation among descendants of the men
involved in the syphilis study. Among them is Theilene Williams of Tuskegee. Her
grandfather, Willie Fitzpatrick, died before knowing the truth about the study.
“We called him Papa,” Williams says. “He was he was a good man, family man, a
farmer.”
Williams says there’s a difference between what’s happening now and what the
government did to her grandfather and the other men.
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“They didn’t know what they were getting into,” she says.
Williams, who is 72, says she was able to talk with her doctor about the vaccine.
“I went on and got it — the first shot,” Williams says. “We know about it. We’ve been
hearing, talking about it. It’s not like ‘come on, we’re going to do this’ without knowing
anything about it like they did.”
Her grandfather is among those now memorialized at the Tuskegee History Center on
a large tile circle in the middle of the museum.
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“Around here in alphabetical order, you have the names of all 623 men,” says
Tuskegee civil rights attorney Fred Gray, on a tour of an exhibit on the syphilis study.
Tuskegee civil rights attorney Fred Gray shows an exhibit on the syphilis study at the Tuskegee History Center. Gray
represented the men when the truth about the study came out in 1972. He won a $10 million settlement for the men, and
their families.
Debbie Elliott/NPR
Gray represented the men when the truth about the study came out in 1972. The men
were not injected with syphilis, but those who already had it were left untreated, even
once penicillin was available.
“Not only did they withhold treatment,” Gray says. “But they sent these men’s names
to the various doctors in the area and told them if they came to their office, not to treat
them for syphilis.”
Gray won a $10 million settlement for the men and their families, and pressured
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Congress to prevent such unethical science.
“And the federal government passed laws which would prohibit now anyone, the
government or anyone else from having a study like they did,” he says.
Issue with people using syphilis study to refuse vaccine
Later, he got then-President Bill Clinton to apologize to the men and their
descendants.
“What the United States government did was shameful,” Clinton said in 1997. “And I
am sorry.”
Gray, now 90 years old, has had his first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. He takes issue
with people citing the syphilis study as a reason not to get vaccinated. He says
individuals must make their own decisions whether or not take the vaccine.
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“But they shouldn’t put it is because of what the government did to the men in the
Tuskegee syphilis study, because they are altogether different situations,” Gray says.
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Herman Shaw speaks as President Bill Clinton looks on during a White House event where Clinton apologized to the
survivors and families of the victims of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Shaw was one of hundreds of Black men who were part
of a government study that followed the progress of syphilis and were told that they were being treated, but were actually
given only a placebo.
Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images
A January poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that more than half of Black
adults surveyed said they did not have immediate plans to get vaccinated. Forty-three
percent said they were going to wait and see how it’s working.
The mistrust of the health care system among African Americans is two-fold, says
Rueben Warren, director of the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health
Care at Tuskegee University — established and funded by the federal government as a
result of the syphilis study.
“It’s both historical and current,” he says. “And not either/or but both/and.”
Warren says the “use and abuse of Black bodies” dates to slavery, and continued for
hundreds of years. He cites the eugenics movement, for example.
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Now, he says, the coronavirus pandemic and its disparate impact on people of color
have exposed the shortcomings of the U.S. health care delivery system. For instance,
there’s no hospital serving the general public in Tuskegee, and coronavirus testing was
hard to come by early on.
So it’s not just historical but it’s current,” he says. “The combination of that makes
folks pause.”
Warren says seeing the mayor or a community leader get a shot isn’t the kind of
assurance that people need. He says that’s neglecting to consider that some people
might not have health insurance that could help then manage any future
complications.
“What about next year?” he asks. “Next year, if something comes up and I don’t have
health insurance, I’m out in the cold.”
He advocates providing health coverage to the uninsured who get the vaccine.
That, Warren says, is a way of assuring people that the health care system will deliver
for them in the future, despite the history.
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