When adjusted by age, racial health disparities run deeper than previous reports, underscoring the rampantness of chronic illness in underserved populations.
New data confirms the stark racial health disparities for COVID-19 health outcomes. When adjusted for age, black patients are dying at a rate 3.6 times that of their white peers, according to data from the Brookings Institution. For Hispanic patients, that number comes in at 2.5 times the death toll of white patients.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a glaring light on racial health disparities that have plagued the US health system for decades. Per the Brookings Institution report, black patients are overall twice as likely to die from COVID-19, and Hispanic patients are equally as likely to die from the condition as their white peers.
Most experts agree this is not because people of color are predisposed to contract COVID-19; the virus is an equal opportunity illness that does not know race or ethnicity. Instead, years of structural inequity in the healthcare system have made it more likely a black patient will develop a chronic illness. And while COVID-19 may not know race, it does affect those with comorbidities more than generally healthy patients.
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This latest report is the first to account for patient age when looking at COVID-19 race data.
“As we argued in a previous analysis on gender, the need to take age into account is paramount, given the huge age gradient in vulnerability to COVID-19,” the researchers said. “Older people are more likely to die from COVID-19 (shown in the black line below), and whites are much more likely to be in the oldest age groups (shown in the bars), where the COVID-19 death rates are highest.”
Using CDC figures for white, black, and Hispanic patients — the three largest groups for which CDC has information — the Brookings Institute adjusted death rates for patient age.
The researchers found that racial health disparities are starker than originally thought because younger black and Hispanic patients are dying at equal rates as older white patients. In other words, the death rates among older white patients have skewed previous data about racial health disparities.
More specifically, the Brookings Institution researchers found that death rates for black patients tend to be equal to the death rates of white patients a decade older than them. Death rates for black patients ages 55 to 64 years old are higher than for white patients in that same age category; instead, they are more similar to death rates for white patients ages 65 to 74.
That trend continues when looking at death rates for black patients ages 65 to 74. These patients are more likely to succumb to the novel coronavirus than white patients ages 65 to 74; their death rates are more similar to white patients ages 75 to 84.
This trend is present, although less pronounced, for Hispanic or Latinx patients.
These disparities become starker when looking at younger patients, the Brookings Institution researchers continued.
For example, death rates for black and Hispanic/Latinx patients ages 45 to 54 are at least six times those of white patients in that same age bracket. White people account for 62 percent of that age bracket, but 22 percent of COVID-19 deaths for that age bracket.
Again, these health disparities have not emerged because COVID-19 attacks black and Hispanic/Latinx patients at a higher rate than white patients; it is a myriad of social determinants of health that have led to these health inequities.
“A number of factors are likely contributing to the substantial race gaps in mortality rates,” the researchers said. “These factors may be influencing the risk of infection and/or the risk of death among those infected.”
As noted above, black patients have faced years of structural racism in the medical field that has increased the odds that they become sicker and develop chronic illness. Chronic illness is a key risk factor for COVID-19.
But that’s not all that’s in play, the Brookings Institution researchers said. Black and Latinx patients are also more likely to have worked jobs at which they were unable to social distance or transition to remote work. This either led to remaining in close quarters with potentially infected individuals, or job loss, which has its own disastrous downstream effects.
Black and Hispanic/Latinx patients are also more likely to live in crowded urban or metropolitan areas, in which COVID-19 outbreaks were rampant and hard to avoid. Not to mention, black people account for 34 percent of the US prison population and Hispanic people 22 percent, per 2018 figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Prisons were also hotbeds for COVID-19 spread.
These findings come in light of the recent national conversation around race and racial justice. According to the researchers, these findings provide further evidence of the racial inequities seen by people of color.
“The issue of racial injustice has rightfully joined the pandemic at the top of the national agenda. Protests against the metronomic killing of Black people, especially at the hands of police, are taking place across the country,” they concluded. “At the same time, race gaps in vulnerability to COVID-19 highlight the accumulated, intersecting inequities facing Americans of color (but especially Black people) in jobs, housing, education, criminal justice – and in health.”
Source: Patientengagement Hit