Racism Is NYC Public Health Crisis, Board Declares

NEW YORK CITY — Racism is a public health crisis that affects communities of color across New York City, a new declaration states.

A resolution approved Monday by the city's Board of Health aims to commit officials toward taking steps to combat racism.

“To build a healthier New York City, we must confront racism as a public health crisis,” Dave Chokshi, the city's health commissioner, said in a statement. “The COVID-19 pandemic magnified inequities, leading to suffering disproportionately borne by communities of color in our City and across our nation. But these inequities are not inevitable."

The resolution details a litany of disparities in health for Black, Indigenous and People of Color in the city.

Those include disproportionately high rates of COVID-19 infection and death and low vaccination rates among Black and Latino city dwellers.

Health officials have "extensively" documented racial inequities in rates of HIV, tuberculosis, maternal mortality, infant mortality, mental health conditions, chronic disease prevalence and mortality, gun violence and other forms of physical violence, the resolution states.

The city's health department, beyond acknowledging structural racism as a public health crisis, must take concrete steps, including:

• Research, clarify, and acknowledge examples of the health department's historic role in divesting and underinvesting in critical community-led health programs, and launching a truth and reconciliation process with communities harmed
• Establish a Data for Equity internal working group to ensure health officials apply an intersectional, anti-racism equity lens to public health data and provide annual guidance to other NYC Mayoral agencies on the best ways to track and improve health equity
• Make recommendations on anti-racism, health-related city Charter revisions to the Mayoral Racial Justice Commission
• Perform an anti-racism review of the NYC Health Code to identify any existing provisions that support systemic and structural racism and bias and recommend new provisions to dismantle them

The full resolution can be read here.