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Manchester poised to become latest Connecticut town to declare racism a public health crisis

Hartford Courant - 7/6/2020

Manchester is poised to become the latest community in the state to declare racism a public health crisis -- a move that has gained traction across the nation amid continued racial justice protests.

A proposed resolution on the board of directors’ meeting agenda for Tuesday says the board will:

Promote equity through all approved policies and enhance educational efforts aimed at understanding, addressing and dismantling racism and how it affects the delivery of human and social services, economic development and public safety.

Seek to form alliances and partnerships with organizations that are confronting racism.

Identify clear goals and objectives, and require periodic reports from town departments, boards, and commissions to assess progress and capitalize on opportunities to further advance racial equity.

If approved, Manchester directors would join leaders in Windsor, Hartford, Bloomfield, West Hartford and New Britain who recently passed similar resolutions.

Advocates of such statements cite racism and segregation as root causes of health problems among Black and Hispanic individuals, including a higher COVID-19-associated death rate and an increased likelihood of being killed by police.

Municipalities across the nation have embraced similar resolutions, including Boston, Denver and Milwaukee, along with several states. State Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, has asked Gov. Ned Lamont to make a similar declaration for the state of Connecticut.

In a letter to Lamont, Anwar, a physician, wrote that depression, anxiety, hypertension, breast cancer, premature births and other health problems are more common among people who suffer from discrimination.

The American Public Health Association, a nonprofit advocacy organization, says racism “hurts the health of our nation by preventing some people the opportunity to attain their highest level of health.”

Racism, according to the organization, may be intentional or unintentional, but in any case “is a driving force of the social determinants of health (like housing, education and employment) and is a barrier to health equity.”

In a June 4 op-ed in The Washington Post, Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health Dean Michelle Williams and Jeffrey Sánchez, a former Massachusetts state representative and a lecturer at the school, wrote that police violence kills Black Americans at nearly three times the rate of white Americans. The authors also wrote that counties with predominantly Black populations were seeing three times the rate of infection -- and six times the rate of COVID-related deaths -- as white counties.

Also, the authors noted that people of color make up a disproportionate number of the essential workers exposed to the virus, and if they do become infected, they are more likely to receive worse care than whites and to have underlying health conditions that make COVID-19 more deadly.

Jesse Leavenworth can be reached at jleavenworth@courant.com

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