Mayo doctor says leveling COVID racial disparities requires building trust.
September 22, 2020
Lasting relationships between healthcare systems and minority communities can start to undo years of justifiable mistrust, says researcher Dr. Mark Wieland.
In the United States, Black people are 2.4 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white people, according to Mayo Clinic physician and researcher Dr. Mark Wieland. Hispanic, Latino and Indigenous people are 1.5 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than whites.
These numbers are not due to genetic differences, Dr. Wieland says, but because of existing systems of structural racism.
From a biomedical standpoint, these include health inequities such as higher rates of certain chronic illnesses like diabetes that lead to worse COVID-19 outcomes, and disproportionate access to healthcare.
There are also socioeconomic factors that impact these death rates.