The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed many longstanding injustices, economic and social, that make life unduly perilous for Black Americans.

There’s one that deserves more attention: How physicians treat patients very differently, depending on race https://trib.al/EXPvKy5 

For @TrevonDLogan, it’s personal:

“I’m a highly educated man living in one of the world’s richest nations... Yet it took me years of persistence and unnecessary suffering to get a digestive illness diagnosed" https://trib.al/EXPvKy5 

It turns out he’s not alone: Evidence suggests that doctors often don’t take seriously the complaints of Black patients.

This prejudice has deadly consequences, and stands in the way of efforts to address health disparities https://trib.al/EXPvKy5 

In antebellum America, enslaved Black women gave birth to some of the smallest babies ever observed.

This was due in part to inadequate diets, and in part to the treatment of pregnant slaves, who were forced to work within a week of giving birth https://trib.al/EXPvKy5 

After the end of chattel slavery, the mortality gap narrowed because of:

Public sanitation
Medical care
Treatments for infectious diseases
Improved living standards

Yet as of 2010, the gap between Black and White mortality was still 5 years https://trib.al/EXPvKy5 

Many see increasing access to medical care as a solution. But it depends on the kind of care Black people get when they show up.

Unfortunately, the medical profession has always viewed Black bodies as inherently different from White ones https://trib.al/EXPvKy5 

Black Civil War veterans were:

No more likely to report pain or aches
Twice as likely to be “doubted” by physicians
15 times more likely to be described as “ignorant”
Three times as likely to be accused of “exaggerating” their illness https://trib.al/EXPvKy5 

Such prejudices endure today. Recent research suggests that doctors treat Black people differently, relative to their White counterparts. They:

Prescribe fewer pain medications
Offer fewer treatments, surgical and otherwise https://trib.al/EXPvKy5 

To truly end racial mortality gaps, health care must be unbiased.

This requires educating doctors about the dangers of prejudice, and changing systems that perpetuate and amplify it https://trib.al/EXPvKy5 

Another solution would be to encourage more Black people to study medicine and become physicians.

Black doctors improve the health outcomes of their patients — Black newborns are much more likely to survive if their physician is Black as opposed to White https://trib.al/EXPvKy5