What is being done?
The city of Chicago is in a slow process of removing racial injustice in the healthcare system and as well as make healthcare accessible to the majority of its residents. As a way to address the problem that the YWCA Alton is trying to solve, it’s good to look at some of the things that are already being done in other places such as Chicago.
To begin with, the city of Chicago saw that the mortality rate of black people compared to white people had a large gap. The average life expectancy for black Chicagoans is about 71.4 years while white Chicagoans live about 9.2 years longer. This fact shows the racial inequality that many black people face in the healthcare system; in recent years the driving forces that take so many black lives are chronic diseases. Diabetes claims around 70% of black victims compared to non-black victims, another would be in infant mortality with black infants being 3 times more likely to not make it past the first few years of life compared to others. With it being known that black people in Chicago are not being shown an equal opportunity to healthcare the question arises; what is Chicago doing to fix this? The first step that they took to solve this problem was to look at the history, “The brief also analyzes housing inequality and income levels, measures economic hardships by race, and looks at other factors such as rates of smoking and obesity, and access to healthy foods. It also notes how Chicago is one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States.” (Duncan). Looking at the history was a good way of understanding how the system was brought up and why the system was the way it was. In response to COVID-19, the city created the Racial Equity Rapid Response Team (RERRT) in order to direct its resources to the most impacted communities to help the areas in the most need (Duncan).
RERRT is one of the solutions that Chicago has come up with to lessen the gap in healthcare inequality, accessibility, and life expectancy. In just five months they managed to do a lot with a lot more to expect. First off they’ve “Implemented a preventative patient outreach program, conducting calls with approximately 68,000 patients. The outreach program targeted high-risk patients (older than 65 years old, with chronic conditions) for a telephone check-in.” (Shapiro) they checked in on the patients about their general health and needs and directed those in need of follow-up care and resources. Many of 68,000 patients were minorities with 43% being black and 36% being Latinx. RERRT managed to get around 36 Chicago healthcare institutions to sign a joint statement outlining ways to reduce bias and have better outcomes for minorities in their institutions, they also opened eight city testing sites in priority neighborhoods where it was deemed necessary.
Everyone always talks about change and throws out ideas but that all means nothing when there isn’t a plan. Chicago knows that this is a citation that can be changed just in a day or in a week so they’ve devised a plan of small actions to slowly shift the outcome. The University of Illinois hospital said that “The groups, which have a long history of working to overcome disparities in the communities they serve, committed to taking seven action steps to advance their work” with would include, “Re-examining institutional policies with an equity lens and making any policy changes that promote equity and opportunity. Improving access to primary and specialty care. Continuing to focus on helping communities overcome chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and asthma. Continuing to advocate for investments that create innovative solutions to achieve enduring improvements in access, quality, and health outcomes for our communities. Continuing their commitment to hiring locally and promoting leaders of color. Renewing and expanding each organization’s commitment to providing anti-racism and implicit bias training for physicians, nurses and staff. Advocating for increased funding for social needs, social services, and programs that promote social justice.”(UIH). Although these are not drastic ideas they help to facilitate change over time and make sure that those in need of help can receive the help they are looking for.
Something that Chicago has been working on for the past 20 years is reducing racial disparities in breast cancer mortality within African American and Hispanic communities. Within the study they extracted data from diseased breast cancer patients in a span of 14 years from the National Center for Health Statistics databases, they then compared the data between the patients who were colored and those that weren’t. After they collected the data they began to analyze it trying to locate the differences “Excess deaths among NHB stemming from the NHB: NHW disparity was obtained by applying the age-specific NHW breast cancer mortality rate to the age-specific NHB population. These were then totaled and subtracted from the NHB observed number of deaths. The difference is the excess breast cancer mortality deaths due to the disparity. In order to assess if the trend in the racial disparity in breast cancer mortality in Chicago was specific to breast cancer, we also examined disparity trends in colon cancer mortality over the same period of time.” (Sighoko, Murphy, Irizarry, Rauscher, Ferrans & Ansell). During the 14 years black and white female breast cancer mortality rates decreased in the United States as a whole, 3/10 cities experienced a significant drop in breast cancer mortality including Chicago. That being said, even though breast cancer mortality rates dropped as a whole, there were differences as it says in the study “though the annual percent change (APC) in mortality declined more slowly for NHB compared to NHW women” (Sighoko, Murphy, Irizarry, Rauscher, Ferrans & Ansell). Above all of the cities, Chicago was the one city analyzed that did not follow this trend, Chicago experienced a decrease in breast cancer mortality rates but they had a larger drop was with black women rather than white women followed by New York and Philadelphia. “The number of excess deaths due to breast cancer for NHB women in Chicago declined by 29”( Sighoko, Murphy, Irizarry, Rauscher, Ferrans & Ansell). With so many healthcare disparities in the United States Chicago has found a simple way to fight this and make it their top priority
