In a recent interview with Boston’s WGBH, Dr. Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health and co-author of the textbook Public Health, discussed the issue of health inequities during the pandemic: “There are two levels where we’re seeing these inequities. We are seeing people of color and people in low-income groups disproportionately testing positive … And among people testing positive, they are affected at disproportionately higher rates than people who are white or are more privileged—and then, among those who do test positive, the rate of fatality is higher.”
Dr. Galea hopes that the toll COVID-19 is taking on people of color will finally spur action against health inequities. “What we are seeing is a set of problems that we have had for decades. It is not new that minorities and people of low income suffer much more illness than people of higher income and majority groups. There is a 15-year difference in life expectancy between the richest 1% and the poorest 1%. That’s an enormous difference. But the coronavirus is revealing things that had really been there already. Perhaps—if one were to think of a silver lining—this is a wake-up call, and our job collectively, should be to say, how can we remove these health gaps?”