Racial Disparities in Healthcare: How COVID-19 Ravaged One of the Wealthiest African American Counties in the United States

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe in January of 2020 causing mass panic and extreme hysteria. While pandemics are not new, COVID-19 is emerging as a public health crisis in nearly every household in America. In this paper, I discuss how COVID-19 has ravaged one of the wealthiest African American counties in the United States. Using Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCR) I seek to examine how disparities exist in health care and public funding is not equally distributed regardless of wealth and status for minoritized communities. Using PCHR’s framework I highlight many of the disparities that exist in health care for people of color during this global health crisis and provide implications for improvement in federal, state, and local funding in communities of color. This article advances scholarship on the intersection between public health and social work particularly alluding to the need for increased advocacy for marginalized communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Anxiety
• COVID-19
• public health critical race praxis (PHCR)
• social work
• African Americans
• marginalized communities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.