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He serves as president of the National Medical association. Good morning to you. Remind folks what the National Medical association is and who your members are. Guest the National Medical association is the group that represents the 50,000 African American physicians in the country. We are the oldest incorporated since 1895. This is our 125th year. Our role is to ensure there is proper health, equity, and inclusion for African American physicians who were denied access to residency programs and being on staff at hospitals for many years. And also to ensure the African American community is well represented so the health has proper care and you are not excluded. Host some of the data makes it clear there is a disproportionate impact of covid19 diagnoses and deaths in the African American community. What is the latest data saying now about how wide that gap is . Guest it is variable from new york, chicago, milwaukee, new orleans, los angeles. In general, i like to look at it on a National Level because we are the National Medical association. Approximately 30 of all cases in the u. S. Are African Americans and African Americans comprise about 13 of the population. So somewhere around 2. 5 times the incidence of covid19 in the African American community. You are talking about millions of cases and tens of thousands of deaths. You are talking about a lot of excess morbidity and deaths. Host in your view, what is the reason for the gap . Is this more of a problem of Underlying Health conditions disproportionately impacting people of color . Is it more a socioeconomic gap that people of color are more exposed to coronavirus and in places where they are more in danger . Guest i look at what i call a toxic admixture. I look at it as three particular areas, elements that weave a cloth of disparate incidents and outcomes from covid19. The three elements are, first, preexisting conditions. Africanamericans are 40 more likely to 50 more likely to have diabetes, 40 more likely to have hypertension, 30 likely to have obesity. These are all indicators for the cdc of more adverse events and outcomes from covid19. The second, and it is very deep, because these all weave together and are social determinants of health. African americans have 1 10 the net worth of the majority household. Poverty. Statistics show with the cdc data, and that data is sketchy, i might add, that those having covid19 and dying from covid19 are four times more likely to be poor. We have poor housing. When you have a housing situation where there are five people in a twobedroom apartment, if there is a need for selfquarantining, it is very difficult. 40 of the population in the United States that is homeless is African American. That is approximately three times the rate of our representation in the population. Food deserts, Food Insecurity. The percent of African Americans that have Food Insecurity are 22 versus 12 . If you do not have access to healthy food, you are more likely to be obese, have a high sodium diet, and therefore be more at risk for hypertension. All of these things work together. And there are others. We work in jobs 30 of the bus drivers are African Americans, so we are more exposed. Security guards, food Service Workers. The third element is a little more insidious but it is real. And that is race. This country has a 400year history of racism. That has affected the health of African Americans. Racism, to feel racism is stressful. Stress increases cortisol and blood pressure. The general concept of racial profiling. When you go into a hospital, how would you be viewed as a patient . Will you be viewed as someone who needs care, someone who has an illness, someone who has abnormal vital signs or will you be viewed as a person needing something . All mixedse things at highero make us risk for Something Like a pandemic. And it is being shown in the statistics we have. Host dr. Oliver brooks is our guest for this last 30 minutes of washington journal. Asking you to call in. Phone lines set up for the eastern and central time zones, and the mountain or pacific time zones. And the line for medical professionals. Racial and Health Disparities in the pandemic is our topic in this last half hour. We will start in charlotte, North Carolina, on the line for independents. Good morning. Caller good morning. How are you . Host doing well. You are on with dr. Brooks. Caller how are you doing, dr. Brooks . Good morning to cspan viewers. It seemed like they did not want to open the country into it came out that the majority of people affected were African Americans. These crowds demanded the government open the state with guns. Somebody lost the concept of what a pandemic is. It does not discriminate. It would seem like certain people want to use this as a political thing. It is not a racial thing. It does not make sense if we go down the same path and divide everything by color. The country is going through this as a whole and you still have people dividing us up with stuff like this. It does not make any sense. You should not be allowed to carry guns into statehouses. I do not understand that mentality. I dont understand it. Host dr. Brooks . Guest there was an article in the l. A. Times yesterday talking about disparities. When you look at those that are protesting to open up the environment i prefer to use the environment because it is not about money. It is about lives. Are whitee protesters or not inclusive of African Americans or latinx individuals. When you think about that, why is that . We are more likely to be losing our jobs and having issues with unemployment. Black businesses only get 1 of loans in the first year they are in existence versus 7 for a white business. My position is the reopening of the environment needs to be done by scientists and Scientific Data and not politicians. We are dying at 2. 5 times the rate of the Majority Community. When you open it for political reasons, economic reasons, and not health and scientific reasons, it is like an experiment. We have been experimented on. This time we will not be , test subjects. That is why we are not protesting to open up faster. I believe you better get it right as opposed to going fast. Host this is how they put it in the New York Times on the editorial page. The vast majority of protesters as you pointed out are white. He writes this is in stark contrast to the victims of covid19 who are disproportionately black and brown as well as those who have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic who are also disproportionately black and brown, as well as those who have been or will be forced to work more as a result of reopening. The Service Workers and laborers who are disproportionately black and brown. He writes that it is true not every Racial Disparity speaks to some deeper dynamic of racism but this one does. I do not think you can separate the vehemence of the lockdown protesters from their whiteness and the knowledge that many of the most affected belong to other racial groups. It is not so much that they are showing racial animus but that their conception of what it means to be free is at its root tied tightly to the racial identity. Your thoughts, doctor . Guest interesting. When you hear them protesting they say i want individual , freedom. When you think of the protests of the 1960s, the civil rights we protests, it was we want freedom. Theres a vision of what freedom is. It is different for people oppressed versus people who have privilege. Individual rights versus a collective need and desire for justice. The fundamental position from from from which the different groups are coming is what is defining that. Host dr. Oliver brooks, president of the National Medical association, is our guest. Net. Org if you want to check them out online. Atlanta, georgia, maria, good morning, you are on with dr. Brooks. Go ahead. Caller i am a 68yearold African American female. I am taking medication and hydroxychloroquine, 200 milligrams. I like to know how the environment affects lupus patients. I am not saying difference i notice when i go out. I have a heavy flareup in my nostrils. I would like to know what you think about those two medicines affecting lupus. First of all, use every caution. I do not believe the symptoms you are feeling in your nose are important in terms of evaluating your situation. Aceinhibitors, theres a lot of information about that. The most prominent i saw was in the new england journal. The feeling is ace inhibitors are involved. If you are on an ace inhibitor right now, stay on it. For your hydroxychloroquine, i would say take it. There has been talk about it having some beneficial effect as it relates to the virus, covid19. Candidateses the show more people die from taking it then were saved from the virus. For you with a lupus, definitely take your medication. Say heed all precautions. Host michael, good morning. Caller thank you for taking my call. I wanted to address with the doctor, i absolutely agree with affectse reasons why it the Africanamerican Community more. The first one is particularly interesting about the comorbidity. When i used to live in manhattan , the area below 86th street was predominantly white and the areas above were predominately African American. I would run every morning. The majority of the runners were white while central park is surrounded by an equal amount of everybody. When you go into a local store south of 86 street, there was an abundance of Health Drinks and Everything Else like that. North of 86, it was difficult to even find diet soda. The doctor mentioned comorbidity like obesity and diabetes. This is all caused by certain behavior issues. How much of the disparate outcome has to do with personal responsibility and their attitude towards their own health . Host dr. Brooks . Guest interesting question. I would say it all links. Your area above, versus below, 86th street is a small, defined area in manhattan. If you go further up above 110th street, maybe before the gentrification, it is a little different. But in general, this gets back to a couple of areas. Number one, food. Africanamericans are almost twice as likely to be food insecure. You are giving one particular area. That access to healthy food is not as readily available to African Americans. This is a fact. Number two, generally speaking, the more money you have, the better you can eat. People talk about whole foods. But even in general, you need funds. 30 of Public Transportation excuse me 40 is used by people , of color. If you can drive to get your food versus having to take Public Transportation to get food. African americans may live in a more crowded environment where there is not the ability to exercise. With diabetes, they look at exercise, nutrition, and medication. We have an uninsured rate of 11 versus 8 in the African American community. You dont have as much access to medication. You cannot exercise as well. And you dont have access to good food. I shudder when i hear personal responsibility. It is easy to say that when you have a car, money, health insurance. Remove those three things, and you will see theres a major difference in how your personal attitude and activities affect your health. Host speaking of access and new york, one of the issues we started this segment with talking about was access to testing in minority communities. I want to play Governor Andrew Cuomo yesterday announcing the expansion of testing in low income and minority communities in new york. This is what he had to say at his briefing yesterday. [video clip] Governor Cuomo today, we are launching a new initiative to expand access to testing in low income communities and communities of color. We are partnering with northwell health, which is the Largest Health system in new york. They are going to set up 22 additional testing sites at churches in predominantly minority communities. This is a different kind of partnership. It is creative but necessary. We are working with those churches individually and association of churches and northwell. Northwell will provide the testing in churches in lower income communities and communities of color. The churches will help us outreach to the community to get people to come in and explain why it is important people come in and get tested. And northwell will do the testing. We have 24 sites in the new york city area. Some will be opening the week of may 12. Some will be opening the second week of may 19. You see the coverage when we add the network of churches is very broad. Again, focused on these communities that we want to reach out to. Host andrew cuomo yesterday. Dr. Brooks, your thoughts on that announcement . Guest i think it is excellent on a number of levels. What is needed is messaging coming to the African American community that is culturally appropriate. One of the primary areas that is influential in African American communities is the faith community, the churches. Going to the churches to do testing is an excellent idea. But do note, he is saying we are now outreaching to the African American community through churches months into this. We are finally getting some outreach. It has improved. But in the beginning, there was a woefully inadequate amount of testing of African Americans. 75 of cdc data did not even have race and ethnic information. I am happy Governor Cuomo was doing that. It is happening in other states and localities. But it is late and should be sufficient. But right now, we are one million deathsn, 75,000, 80,000 in and this is what we are hearing. Host vincent is on the line for medical professionals. Good morning. Caller good morning. Good morning, dr. Brooks. What is realistic as to when we will have a safe and effective vaccine against covid . What would you say to people who are resistant to vaccines due to our history where blacks have reason to be skeptical regarding our medical system . Guest that thing in my mind that which allows us right now, we have Public Health which is physical distancing, wash your hands, covering your cough. We have treatments, go to the hospital, ventilators, oxygen, medication. And third is vaccines. Right now, there are 106 vaccines in some level of development. The biggest ones lately have been the vaccines you heard about last week. Those are interesting because you can rapidly manufacture them. You can get 100 million doses made. The thing is we dont have the vaccine studies yet. In my estimation, it will take probably a year or more and we dont even know if the vaccines will work. I am cautiously optimistic. I believe it is important to have African Americans involved in Clinical Trials because there is some skepticism in the African American community regarding vaccines. I will say categorically that vaccines are safe and effective. I would say it would be imperative to have African Americans involved in the clinical trial. So when i go to my Africanamerican Community and say, there is a vaccine. It protects against covid19. We are dying at 2. 5 times the rate, this is what we need to do. I can feel comfortable knowing you were involved in the Clinical Trials and it is safe and effective for us. Host dr. Oliver brooks is our guest until the end of our program today. He is president of the National Medical association and also the chief medical officer at Watts Healthcare Corporation. What is that . Guest Watts Healthcare Corporation is a federally qualified health center, which means we get federal funding to care for the uninsured. We are in south los angeles. We do take care of those uninsured. Again, African Americans have a higher rate of uninsured status. For those that are uninsured and cannot get on the exchanges, we thank those that supported the Affordable Care act, obamacare, because the rate of uninsured dropped dramatically with that, and that is excellent. For those uninsured, there are over 1000 federally qualified Health Centers in the network throughout the country where care can be accessed. Host it is wattshealth. Org. If you have a question, you can call in on the phone lines set up originally and the special line for medical professionals. In texas, thanks for waiting. Are you with us . Go ahead. Caller yes. I have a question for dr. Brooks. [indiscernible] how come blacks are food deserts if they rob food stores . Host dr. Brooks, did you get a question there . Guest i am sorry, i did not not hear him well. Host im not sure what his question was. Next in new york. Caller good morning, dr. Brooks. I have more of a statement than a question. A lot of americans are so disappointed in our horrible health care system. Joe biden pretty much offers more of the same for the democratic party. But the green party offers a real alternative, something that every american wants, universal health care. And free college. All the things americans are looking for, and we hope to be on the ballot in all 50 states by election day. Why arent americans focused on every party in the United States and not just the Republican Democratic party . Thanks very much. Thank you for your unbiased viewpoints on cspan. Thank you. Host dr. Brooks, go ahead, sir. Guest without speaking to the political aspects, the National Medical association does support universal health care. As most americans know, we are the only first world country, the only highly developed country, that does not have universal health care. I believe that is a major issue. I will not look into which politician supports what, or party. I do know that is relevant. When you look at the United States, we spend more per capita on health care than any country in the world but our Health Outcomes put us at 37th in the world. However it is that we are deploying our finances or capital as it relates to health care, we are not getting the proper return on investment. Host dr. Oliver brooks, our guest taking your phone calls. Ronald is next out of new hampshire. Good morning. Caller thank you for taking my call. One of the issues with the disparity is misinformation about the disease. I was wondering if you have a contact at the cdc because there is a specific piece of information they are putting out that is completely incorrect and is causing i dont know how many illnesses and deaths because of this misinformation. It is in the frequently asked questions section of their website. It concerns how the virus is spread and immunity. It has a specific statement that says, and i quote, someone who has been released from covid19 quarantine is not considered a risk for spreading the virus to others if they have not developed illness during the incubation period. That is completely not correct. You dont assume somebody has immunity just because they have been through quarantine. This information has been on a on their website. I have been trying to contact them for weeks. One of our local tv stations in vermont were putting out this information. I finally contacted them and got them to stop saying that. I was wondering if there is anything we can do about that. If you or you know someone who has a contact at cdc that can fix that. It is causing illness and death i am sure. Guest ok. That is interesting. I would say quarantining is when you are separating yourself from others because there is concern you might have been exposed. 14 days is the general time for quarantine. I will say the studies show the median shedding time of the virus is 20 days. I would somewhat agree with you. Saying that you are no longer contagious after 14 days of quarantining, you are asymptomatic, is something i cannot categorically agree with. The only way you can say someone is not shedding the virus is not spreading the virus is with a negative test. We do have communication with the cdc. I will review that particular guideline on their website and see what we can do. That is an interesting question in statement. And statement. Host tarsha is next out of tuscaloosa, alabama. Good morning. Caller good morning, dr. Brooks. I do have a question i would like to address. I think there is an underlying issue not being looked at. Some decisions that are being some whereby it may not favor others. I think it is not just that there may be some Underlying Health conditions that are out there making it more likely minorities are dying from this disease. Say for instance, you have nurses. And it is something that maybe people do not want to talk about. But you have nurses from all over the country saying that there are patients being left being put under on the breathing machines and they are left to die. Most of them are minority patients, just like medical apartheid. And then, theres no one there because their family members have left. I know in alabama they had this policy where if you were disabled or a minority, they would not even try to put you on a breathing machine at all. I would like to know, what do you think about that . Host dr. Brooks . Guest the caller brings up a good point. In a Public Health emergency when there is not someone with an advanced directive where a decision has to be made about a dnr, or lets be more fundamental, we have one ventilator and two people. Which one gets the ventilator . This is where you can see implicit bias. Number when the decisions are two, made, it is often determined by who will have the best quality of life. If you come into this being born black in a racist society, you may have been homeless, you have low income your quality of life , is likely to be less than someone elses. The National Medical association in partnership with the coalition has put out a manifesto. One of the platforms of the manifesto is we want data on all of the dnr reporters, all of the decisions that are made to be provided. We want them to go to a Community Advisory board for evaluation. Maybe after the decisions have been made, but we can look for trends and tendencies. There is a great concern that when life or death decisions are made, generally not by nurses but by doctors, there is not time to bring the ethical board in, this may be a snap decision. So it is an excellent point. We do have concerns regarding that. Hence, the push and manifesto with one aspect of it saying lets monitor that. We dont even have data on that. Host if people want to read that manifesto and strategy, nma net. Org. Time for a few more calls with dr. Oliver brooks this morning. Mike has been waiting, lakeland, florida, go ahead. Caller i just want to comment on the doctor. The first thing he said when you came on this morning is this country has a 400year history of racism, as if we still live in a racist society. This is not 150 years ago. This is not the 1950s. Our country has fought through that stuff. We have come a long way. We elected our first African American president 12 years ago. Keep in mind, that happened. We still have less than 20 black population in america. How can you call it a racist country . Systemic racism . Do you really think there are medical professionals deciding not to help people because of the color of their skin . That is like a bad movie. It is a joke. This type of thing is harmful to our country. And you folks in colleges and universities across the nation, i am a High School Teacher so i see the next generation. They do not believe what you are saying. When they get into college, a lot of times they are being brainwashed by people saying what youre saying. Do not try to say that this country is racist because we are not. There are bad apples. There are white bad apples, there are black bad apples. But the vast majority of us just want to live happy lives, raise our family, and be respectful of one another. So you should try to do the same. Thank you. Host dr. Brooks, give you a chance to respond. Guest i would say were that to be true, that would be beautiful. But i would direct you to a story i just read in detroit where a black man went to three different hospitals could not , get tested for covid, could not get admitted, went home and died in his easy chair. After,t day, the day she put him in the ground where she could not be there. She went to the hospital and said my husband died of covid19. They looked at her and said i dont believe you need to be tested. As she sat there, a woman of the Majority Community came in and said i have nausea and diarrhea because i think i ate some bad sushi. They rushed her in and took her back to evaluate her for covid19. Racism is alive and well in the United States. It has not gone away. It directly affects the Health Outcomes of the African Americans. I hear what he is saying. It is not true. There are a lot of those that believe that. And we at the National Medical association need to ensure that the Health Outcomes of our people are not affected by race. We are working hard for example to get implicit bias training. Something just like he said. A doctor believes he has no hint of racism, but it is subconscious. It is there and documented. Host before we go, can you talk about your work with the administration and the cdc how , much contact you have with them and how you think they have done responding to some of these concerns . Guest i have been on a white with robert redfield. The administrator of the cdc was there. He promised to start collecting race and ethnic data. The cdc generally collects race and ethnicity. The race and ethnic data we are getting has been coming from an amalgam of information provided by states and local authorities. I think the cdc has done some work, but i think they are working in an environment that is not a wholly scientific environment. I do believe there is some politicization of the cdc. I think they have the ability to give more information. There is a report they were unable to get fully released. I have had interaction with the cdc. I believe there are excellent scientists. I believe we could be getting much more out of them at this point in time. Host dr. Oliver brooks is president of the National Medical association. Nmanet. Org. Do appreciate your time this morning, sir. Guest think you very much. Cspans washington journal live everyday with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up monday morning, we will talk with north talk with North Carolina democratic congresswoman about the response to the pandemic. Andy discussion on how the coronavirus is affecting the federal workforce. Then, the Heritage Foundation will be on to talk about voting by mail. Also, National Vote at Home Institute see al discusses efforts to expand vote by mail and absentee balloting for the november general election. Lunch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 eastern on monday morning. Join the discussion. Now, the Senate Judiciary committee holds a confirmation hearing on the nomination of judge Justin Walker to serve on the u. S. Court of appeals for the district of columbia circuit. He was questioned on his judicial experience as well as past criticisms of the supreme courts 2012 Health Care Law decision. This is two and a half hours. The hearing will come to order. Order. This is a meeting room set up differently to deal with the reality we all face as a nation trying to practice social distancing and good hygiene. Thank you for coming

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