Milwaukee helping shape a national conversation on racism as a public health crisis

Inequality can be deadly.

Milwaukee was among the first counties to reveal how deadly when the coronavirus pandemic struck just over a year ago. By tracking and publicly sharing demographic data, officials here quickly recognized what soon became a troubling national trend: COVID-19 was devastating Black and Latino communities. Milwaukee County was one of the very first in the country to explicitly track this data based on race.The data has helped determine where resources would be directed, including when it came to testing and vaccinations.

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Special News Series: Rising Up For Justice! – CDC Director Declares Racism A ‘Serious Public Health Threat’

“Racism is a serious public health threat that directly affects the well-being of millions of Americans,” declared the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “As a result, it affects the health of our entire nation. Racism is not just the discrimination against one group based on the color of their skin or their race or ethnicity, but the structural barriers that impact racial and ethnic groups differently to influence where a person lives, where they work, where their children play, and where they worship and gather in community. These social determinants of health have life-long negative effects on the mental and physical health of individuals in communities of color.

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‘I Won’t be Used as a Guinea Pig for White People’

African-American inclusion in Coronavirus medical studies is crucial for racial equality. People of color have suffered the most from Covid-19, but Black people have been more hesitant than other groups to get vaccines due to a long history of abuse by medical experimenters. 

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