Sen. Kamala Harris is responding to how the coronavirus pandemic ravaging communities of color with legislation to provide bias and anti-racism training for health providers and others who are providing testing, treatment, contact tracing, and vaccine distribution related to the pandemic. "People of color are being infected and dying from COVID-19 at disproportionate and astounding rates," the California Democrat said in a statement introducing the legislation. Rep. Alma Adams, a North Carolin a Democrat, is introducing the COVID-19 Bias and Anti-Racism Training Act companion bill in the House.
"This is, in part, due to persistent bias in our health care system," Harris continued. "We must take action to address this issue, especially as our country continues to face an unprecedented health crisis. I'm glad to partner with Representative Adams on this bill which is a critical step toward ensuring people—especially people of color—receive comprehensive, culturally competent care." In an exclusive, she told theGrio "Black folks are not receiving the same kind of treatment that others receive. […] There are biases in every component of this system and it is having real health consequences." To address those biases, her bill would allocate $200 million in grants for the training.
The grants would be available to "hospitals, other health care providers, state, local, Tribal, and territorial public health departments, medical and other health professional training schools, and nonprofits," to either establish training programs or improve them if they already exist. It would prioritize funding in communities that have high racial and ethnic disparities in infection, hospitalization, and death rates from COVID-19. Apart from the grant program, it would also require that the Secretary of Health and Human Services "collaborate with health care professionals, policy experts specializing in addressing bias and racism within the health care system, and community-based organizations to develop requirements for evidence-based, ongoing bias and anti-racism training." Which is a particularly nice little thumb twist to add in to the bill. It would be so wonderful to force a Trump official to participate in anti-bias, anti-racism training, or at least put into law that they had to do it.
The vast racial disparities of the virus demand some kind of action. Analyses have shown that Black and Latino people have been infected at three times the rate of white people. They are almost twice as likely to die as white people. They are such a large part of the workforce that has been deemed "essential" that their lives have been particularly at risk. A healthcare system that has had racism baked in, just like it is in the rest of society, has to be a factor in the higher death rate in these communities.
Harris addressed that with theGrio. "What we do is we recognize it, we speak the truth about it, and then we deal with it," she said. "And deal with it in a number of ways that include also training of health care professionals around their bias." She talked about the studies showing that providers spend less time with Black patients than whites, and spend less effort in their bedside manner with Black people. "We need to train physicians and health professionals to recognize when they are condescending to a patient and in particular, a Black patient […] it is going to make that person believe that they are not being heard, but also believe that this is not a system they can trust," she says.
The legislation has a huge coalition from the healthcare industry to advocacy organizations supporting it, the American Hospital Association, American Public Health Association, Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, Association of American Medical Colleges, Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations, National Urban League, the Association of Black Cardiologists, National Hispanic Medical Association, and the Black Women’s Health Imperative, among others.