Opinion: We must address the social determinants affecting the black community to defeat covid-19
of health” — a group of nonmedical variables that impact up to 80 percent of health outcomes. These social determinants include access to healthy food, transportation, Zip code, health insurance and even mold levels. Most of these are not immediately correctable. New supermarkets to place fresh vegetables in communities that are food deserts will not be built tomorrow. The next day we will not narrow education achievement gaps.
In the medical world, as elsewhere, these workers often go unnoticed and too often unnamed. They are the hospital cleaning personnel, the delivery, food service and warehouse workers, and municipal employees who truly are on the front line. They stand between us and pure social chaos. These workers are black or brown, low-wage and with limited formal education. They come in contact with the coronavirus in its most pernicious forms: on cardboard, stainless steel, on clothing and in the air.
In cities where essential workers rely on public transportation, they now find reduced train and bus schedules — placing more people onto fewer transports and making social distancing unlikely. With many doctors and nurses scrambling to find personal protective equipment, what are the chances that these workers — also laboring in proximity to the disease — are going to be adequately supplied? After work, they nonetheless must head home on that same overcrowded public transportation.
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