[solemn music]
- Nathan Denzin: Across the board,
Black people in Wisconsin suffer disproportionately
from bad health and/or barriers to health care.
Black children in the state are four times more likely
to have lead poisoning than their white peers.
Also in Wisconsin,
Black people die younger than almost all other races,
and Black women are far more likely to die during pregnancy
or in childbirth than white women.
The statistics are so bad for Black people that in 2019,
Milwaukee County declared racism a public health crisis.
- We can say all health disparities
are a direct consequence
of being an American descendant of slavery.
- Nathan: Tito Izard is the president and CEO
for Milwaukee Health Services,
where he opened a clinic in an underserved neighborhood.
He says that because racism impacts every aspect
of Black Wisconsinites' life, it affects their health.
- Health is, again,
the narrow consequence of the condition
or the environment that has been created.
- Black people, Indigenous people
are disproportionately likely to be in impoverished
and socially-stratified circumstances.
- Nathan: Tiffany Green is a professor
for population health sciences at UW-Madison.
- We know that having unstable housing,
not having enough food,
being poor, those contribute to outcomes.
- Health is not just things that are going on
in your physical body, but it is your emotional well-being,
your mental well-being, your spiritual health,
even your social health.
- Nathan: Dr. Jasmine Zapata is the
chief medical officer for community health
at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
She says health is much more than trips to the doctor.
- The things that happen outside of the clinic walls
have more of an impact on one's health outcomes
and quality of life
than the very things we do in the hospitals and clinics.
- Nathan: All of those factors outside of the clinic
are known as the social determinants of health.
- Dr. Zapata: Broadly, social determinants of health
refers to non-medical factors
that influence one's health outcome.
Where people are born,
where they age, where they grow, where they live,
where they work.
Things outside of the traditional medical model
that we think of when we think about health outcomes.
- Nathan: When it comes to where Black Wisconsinites live,
only a quarter of them own their own home,
and they face one of the highest income gaps in the country.
A gap that has persisted since 1968.
Another important social determinant,
how close you are to fresh food.
Black Wisconsinites are five times more likely
to live in a food desert than white residents.
- We generally don't have control of the food
that we have in our community.
You know, grocery stores,
full service grocery stores are oftentimes
far away from our communities.
- Nathan: Reggie Jackson educates people about diversity.
He says that living in a food desert means much of your food
comes from gas stations or convenience stores,
where the only options are highly processed.
- Reggie: People don't have access to healthy food
or they can't afford healthy food.
- We didn't just come to this place
where Black and Brown people are disproportionately likely
to live in resource-deprived environments.
It is, it's racism.
- Nathan: But despite the declaration
that racism is a public health crisis,
Izard says not much has been done in Milwaukee since 2019
that brings parity to health outcomes.
- Making that declaration without subsequent steps
though, is disingenuous.
So for most people in the community, it's like,
"Okay, well, we hear that statement.
Tell us something that we don't know already," right?
- Nathan: For Izard, the only path forward
is to improve all of the determinants of health.
The Madison-based Nehemiah is a community group
working to take those subsequent steps.
- When you start to shift systems,
then you start to actually impact the outcomes.
- Nathan: Kim Neuschel is now
the community outreach facilitator
at the UW School of Nursing.
When she worked as a public health nurse,
she enrolled in Nehemiah's Justified Anger:
Black History for a New Day course.
The nine-week course teaches the community about race,
history, and justice.
- I think something like this course helps us zoom out
and recognize that we all are who we are
because of everything that came before us.
- Nathan: Neuschel said the course helped her realize
the full scope of how racism
has affected health care, and shifted her perspective
to see patients more holistically.
- Health care is important.
Your genetic makeup is important,
but significantly more important are the social,
economic, and environmental factors,
and these are the things that we know
racism is, you know, embedded within.
- Nathan: The course also helped
Neuschel's public health team
find out why young Black students in one grade school
were repeatedly absent from class.
- Kim: And one of the main factors
was the walking route to school didn't feel safe.
- Nathan: So the team worked to make the path safe
and inviting again.
First, they installed better lighting in a tunnel
that felt unsafe, but then went further.
- We raised money to respond to their idea
of putting in a mural that the kids designed.
- Nathan: After adding the lights,
the mural, and a few other improvements,
absence rates improved.
- And we did show at the end of that,
kids' sense of safety and sense of belonging and connection
both to the school as well as to their community
and that walking route really shifted for them.
- Nathan: That shift brought healthy change
and access to opportunity in the children's lives
who now felt safe enough to walk to school every day.
- It's good to become aware; it's better to actually
transform that into actual actionable items.
What are you specifically going to do?
- Nathan: For Here & Now, I'm Nathan Denzin.