This is going to be a really long response because none of this happened overnight. It’s the result of centuries’ worth of racist and classist policies meeting with a pandemic. It’s only been within the ~last 25 yrs that the public health community acknowledged poor health (1/x) https://twitter.com/jalenelrod/status/1248268032977371137

isn’t always the result of poor decisions. Factors like education, wages, job, neighborhood, state/fed policy all impact our health. Ex: eating off the dollar menu every day isn’t very healthy, but if you have a limited budget, live in a food desert, & don’t have a car, (2/x)

how many options do you really have? African Americans have borne the brunt of policies designed to make economic mobility difficult, like wage stagnation and an unjust criminal justice system. Low wages lead to less access to regular & preventative healthcare/medication. (3/x)

So the effects of things like food deserts accumulate and then it’s diabetes or heart disease or both. Enter the pandemic. People with underlying conditions are more likely to really struggle with COVID19 & people who have been denied regular access to the tools they need to (4/x

stay healthy are more likely to be POC. We have to do better. We have a saying in public health policy called “health in all policies.” What it means is that we don’t just look at things like insurance or M4A or Medicaid to shape people’s health. We also look at transportation (5

or education, or housing, etc and assess how they will affect people’s health. And we take a cradle to grave approach meaning we consider implications over a lifetime. The US isn’t very good at making proactive policy, but that’s the shift we need. Our value system has to match

We need politicians whose life experience hasn’t been shaped by racism to listen more than they talk and we have to center solutions on the most impacted by the current system.