S1E13 / A Black Plague / Helene Gayle & Aletha Maybank

EPIDEMIC with Dr. Celine Gounder

KFF Health News and Just Human Productions

Science, #Coronavirus, Health & Fitness, #Smallpox, Documentary, #Covid19, #Sarscov2, #Eradication, Life Sciences, Society & Culture, #Covid, Medicine

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2020

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“As a nation, we've got to put in place a public health system that includes disease preparedness, so that we're ready for whatever is the next shock. And that all of us, no matter who we are, what social-economic status, what race, ethnicity, what job we have, that we don't have to go through this again. It's in our hands. We can do it. And it is within our reach to be able to end these sorts of unacceptable wealth and health disparities.” - Dr. Helene Gayle In today’s episode, co-hosts Dr. Celine Gounder and Ron Klain speak with Dr. Helene Gayle, CEO of the Chicago Community Trust, and Dr. Aletha Maybank, the Chief Equity Officer at the American Medical Association, about the health and wealth gaps that exist in poorer communities in the US, and how COVID-19 has widened these gaps, leaving members of these communities more vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19. They also discuss how racial stereotypes are affecting many people’s abilities to follow public health guidelines, such as the use of face masks. Finally, they discuss how, in order to move past these stereotypes and biases, we need good data, and policies informed by this data, as cases of COVID-19 are likely being underreported in communities of color, leading to a lack of help in areas that need it most. Listener Q&A: Is it possible to safely reopen the country before herd immunity or a vaccine? What can we expect from the second wave of COVID-19 cases when social distancing measures are lifted, and what can we learn from prior pandemics to prepare? This podcast was created by Just Human Productions. We're powered and distributed by Simplecast. We're supported, in part, by listeners like you. #SARSCoV2 #COVID19 #COVID #coronavirus

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Dr. Saline Gounder and I'm Ron Plainin. And this is epidemic.
0:19.0	Today is Tuesday, April 21st. Over the weekend, the U a grim milestone. More than 40,000 Americans have died from COVID at the time I'm recording this.
0:31.0	One thing's clear. People of color, Latin X people,
0:35.8	indigenous people, and particularly African Americans have made up a
0:40.0	disproportionate number of those deaths. White House coronavirus response
0:44.8	coordinator Dr. Deborah Burks spoke about this a few weeks back. We don't want to
0:49.9	give the impression that the African American community is more susceptible to the virus. the there are more susceptible to more difficult and severe disease and poorer outcomes.
1:06.0	Today we're going to look at why that is, why this disease that affects all of us has affected some of us so much more than others.
1:16.5	Dr Helene Gail is the CEO of the Chicago Community Trust.
1:20.7	Before that, she led the global humanitarian organization, Care, launched the McKinsey
1:26.2	Social Initiative and directed global health programs at the Gates Foundation.
1:31.2	And before that, spent 20 years at the CDC working on infectious diseases like HIV and tuberculosis.
1:38.0	I grew up in the 60s and early 70s during the time when our nation was going through a lot of
1:46.0	social change whether it was the civil rights movement or the women's movement or you
1:51.8	know I looked at what was going on in Africa,
1:55.0	anti-apartheid and other anti-colonial movements.
1:58.8	And so I grew up with that sense of wanting to be part of something bigger than myself.
2:04.4	For Helene, that sense of mission took her to medicine. She became a pediatrician, but
2:10.4	once she started to see patients, she realized that their problems weren't always so clear-cut.
2:16.0	Oftentimes, what brought people in and out of the emergency room or in and out of my primary care clinic had less to do with the tools that we had in our health toolkit but had a lot to do with systems and society and how people were able to have other aspects of
2:37.2	their lives that allowed them to live healthy lives.
2:40.5	Helene saw these connections between class, race, and disease in her own family.
	...

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