Linda Villarosa on the hidden toll of racism on health

The TED Interview

TED

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2022

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Linda Villarosa was the health editor of Essence Magazine, she says she had a one-track mind. A former college athlete, Linda grew up, like many of us, thinking about health on an individual level. But after reporting on environmental justice, the AIDS crisis, and black mother and infant mortality rates, Linda has uncovered just how much culture and public health infrastructure impact life expectancy – specifically for black Americans. Her 2018 cover story on “Why America's Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis" was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. In today’s episode, she highlights how structural racism impacts community health and talks about why she’s still optimistic about combating health disparities in the country and across the globe.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you listened to Talk Radio recently?
0:03.0	Let's talk about this war on white people.
0:05.0	That's a pro-quiling, it's good for you.
0:07.0	Bill the Keystone pipeline, deport illegals, build the wall.
0:10.0	I'm Katie Thornton, host of the divided dial,
0:13.0	a new five-part series from WNMC's On the Media,
0:17.0	about how the American right came to dominate Talk Radio
0:21.0	and how one company is launching a conservative media empire
0:25.0	from the airwaves.
0:26.0	Listen every Tuesday and on the media feed.
0:34.0	Welcome to the Ted interview.
0:36.0	I'm your host, Stephen Johnson.
0:38.0	Martin Luther King Jr. once said,
0:41.0	of all the forms of inequality,
0:43.0	injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman.
0:48.0	The COVID crisis has made that injustice in the United States
0:52.0	all to apparent, with much higher rates of hospitalization
0:56.0	and death per capita in black and brown communities
0:59.0	all around the country.
1:00.0	I think it's fair to say that our guest this week, Linda Villarosa,
1:03.0	has become the most important journalistic voice
1:06.0	reporting on the crisis of health inequality in the country.
	...

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