Heartfelt Thanks to the NIMHD Scientific Community in the Time of COVID-19

Posted on September 14, 2021September 14, 2021 by NIMHD

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Co-authored by
Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, M.D.
Director, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities

Monica Webb Hooper, Ph.D.
Deputy Director, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities

As leaders of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), we want to express our sincerest thanks to the NIMHD scientific community and staff for their efforts as we continue to experience the most challenging public health crisis in over a century. Your rapid-response efforts to document, understand, and address the undue burden of COVID-19 among populations with health disparities—the very groups already dealing with longstanding disparities in life expectancy and overall well-being—have not gone unnoticed. We deeply appreciate your unwavering commitment to research designed to uncover the causes of health disparities, develop interventions to address them, and promote health equity.

Since March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has radically affected us in our daily lives—as individuals, families, and as members of the biomedical research workforce. We have all had to manage unfathomable adjustments and elevated stress both personally and professionally. The pandemic has disproportionately affected the lives and livelihoods of populations that experience health disparities in even more pronounced ways. And these groups—racial and ethnic minority communities, socioeconomically disadvantaged persons, people who live in rural underserved areas and sexual and gender minority persons—are prioritized by NIMHD. Continue reading “Heartfelt Thanks to the NIMHD Scientific Community in the Time of COVID-19” →

NIH’s Minority Health and Health Disparities Strategic Plan 2021-2025: A Path to the Future

Posted on July 27, 2021September 28, 2021 by NIMHD

Stock images representing a variety of races, ethnicities, gender, and ages

NIH’s Minority Health and Health Disparities Strategic Plan

By Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, M.D.
Director, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought minority health and health disparities new attention on the national stage. COVID-19 has disproportionately affected African Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, and Latinos and Latinas.

This is a microcosm of the health equity challenge that plagues the U.S.

As in most conditions with health disparities, the causes are complex. People from some of these groups are less likely to have health insurance than Whites. Inequities in access to quality education and limited economic opportunities for many, mean that many minority groups are disproportionately represented among the ranks of essential workers, such as those who work in farms, grocery stores, and support staff in health care settings and long-term care facilities, and less able to avoid the virus at work than people who work in office jobs. Continue reading “NIH’s Minority Health and Health Disparities Strategic Plan 2021-2025: A Path to the Future” →

National Minority Mental Health Month: Reflections and Resources

Posted on July 20, 2021July 20, 2021 by NIMHD

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Mental illness does not discriminate, and more than 40 million Americans experience them each year regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity, or socioeconomic status. July is National Minority Mental Health Month—a time to raise awareness about the unique psychological struggles that people from racial and ethnic minority communities face.

For National Minority Mental Health Month, NIMHD is sharing reflections and resources about the challenges, stigma, and access to mental health providers minorities often experience. We encourage you to educate yourself, your families, and your communities about mental health and emotional wellbeing. Continue reading “National Minority Mental Health Month: Reflections and Resources” →

Don’t Forget the Good: Reflections from LGBTQ+ Youth Before and During COVID-19

Posted on June 24, 2021September 28, 2021 by NIMHD

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Photo of Dr. Jeremy Goldbach

By Jeremy T. Goldbach, Ph.D., LMSW
Associate Professor
Chair, USC Social Behavioral Institutional Review Board
Director, Center for LGBT Health Equity
Pronouns: He/Him
University of Southern California
Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

I remember it like yesterday. I stepped into the small, cramped meeting room of a local LGBTQ drop-in center. The room served triple duty as a social milieu, computer lab, and meeting room. Posters and homemade art covered the walls, displayed proudly everywhere the eye could see like wallpaper, almost demanding inspiration and hope from passive onlookers. The warm room, paired with the anxiety that no title or position can ever seem to overcome, made my hands clammy. I had arrived seeking feedback on an intervention we had been developing for nearly a decade. Bracing myself for the brutal honesty only found in adolescence, I opened the floor. “So, what do you think?” Continue reading “Don’t Forget the Good: Reflections from LGBTQ+ Youth Before and During COVID-19” →

The Sweetness of our Ancestors: Thoughts on Diabetes, Genetics, and Ethnic Diversity in Research

Posted on June 17, 2021June 17, 2021 by NIMHD

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By Larissa Avilés-Santa, M.D., M.P.H.
Director, Clinical and Health Services Research
National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities

Dr. Larissa Avilés-Santa

Hurricane season starts on June 1. Tracking of storms that are formed along the Northwestern coast of Africa moving westward, and predictive models of increasing wind force and rain are the norm in every daily news in the Caribbean during this time of the year. Perhaps, the ships that brought our enslaved ancestors from different regions of Africa, and from different parts of Europe, the Middle East and Asia navigated the same routes of these tropical storms. And those may be the same routes that our other ancestors, those who had lived millennia on this side of the globe, navigated when facing seasonal changes in nature, wars and survival in paradise. All those peoples, all those ancestries met and blended In the New World and gave us a rich inheritance of history, traditions, and health.

The indigenous people of my archipelago named my land Borikén – the land of the mighty Lord- where they worshiped the god Yukiyú. Yet, they anticipated the devastation after the almost annual ravages caused by the evil god Juracán, where the name hurricane comes from. Hurricane season brings remote and very recent memories of our fragility and resilience. Hurricane season also brings memories of school days off (¡Qué chévere! Nice!), doing homework under the candle lights and eating canned tuna and soda crackers while waiting for electricity to be restored. It also reminds us that catastrophic events like hurricanes can impact our physical surroundings and our physical health.

Right before the end of the hurricane season comes Thanksgiving, the preamble to our traditionally long Puerto Rican Christmas season: parrandas (impromptu gathering of friends or relatives caroling house to house throughout the night), and of course, preparing and eating food beyond January 6… music, food and drink learned from our ancestors that feed our souls and make our bodies happy…so happy and so sweet. Continue reading “The Sweetness of our Ancestors: Thoughts on Diabetes, Genetics, and Ethnic Diversity in Research” →

Addiction Should Be Treated, Not Penalized

Posted on June 8, 2021September 28, 2021 by NIMHD

Addiction Should Be Treated, Not Penalized

NOTE: NIMHD Insights is reposting this op-ed piece with permission from the Health Affairs Blog. It is written by the Director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Dr. Nora D. Volkow, and is available in Spanish on the NIDA website.

By Nora D. Volkow, M.D.
Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse

Dr. Nora D. Volkow

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the large racial health disparities in the United States. Black Americans have experienced worse outcomes during the pandemic, continue to die at a greater rate than White Americans, and also suffer disproportionately from a wide range of other acute and chronic illnesses. These disparities are particularly stark in the field of substance use and substance use disorders, where entrenched punitive approaches have exacerbated stigma and made it hard to implement appropriate medical care. Abundant data show that Black people and other communities of color have been disproportionately harmed by decades of addressing drug use as a crime rather than as a matter of public health.

We have known for decades that addiction is a medical condition—a treatable brain disorder—not a character flaw or a form of social deviance. Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence supporting that position, drug addiction continues to be criminalized. The U.S. must take a public health approach to drug addiction now, in the interest of both population well-being and health equity. Continue reading “Addiction Should Be Treated, Not Penalized” →

Other Impacts of COVID-19: Anti-Asian Hate

Posted on May 3, 2021December 16, 2021 by NIMHD

By Gilbert C. Gee, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Community Health Sciences
UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
University of California, Los Angeles

Dr. Gilbert C. Ge

The rise of COVID-19 coincided with a rise in reports about anti-Asian hate incidents in the U.S. and around the world in 2020. Analyses of social media data showed a massive 17,000% increase in negative sentiment against Asians that correlated with our former president’s infamous use of the phrase “China virus” in March of 2020, which directly contradicted calls by public health officials to use neutral terms such as “COVID-19.”¹ Other research confirms these trends². Continue reading “Other Impacts of COVID-19: Anti-Asian Hate” →

A Black Doctor and Scientist on Vaccinating Minorities

Posted on April 14, 2021September 28, 2021 by NIMHD

Photo of Dr. Roderic I. Pettigrew getting a COVID-19 vaccine

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NOTE: For National Minority Health Month, NIMHD Insights Blog is sharing this timely op-ed that was printed with permission from the Houston Chronicle from former and founding Director of NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, Dr. Roderic I. Pettigrew.

By Roderic I. Pettigrew, Ph.D., M.D.
CEO of Engineering Health
Executive Dean of Engineering Medicine
Texas A&M University and Houston Methodist Hospital
Former and Founding Director, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering

Dr. Roderic I. Pettigrew getting his COVID-19 vaccine

When it was first announced that a COVID-19 vaccine was authorized for emergency use by the Federal Drug Administration in the United States, the scientific community was finally able to exhale. As a Black physician and member of the scientific community, I was particularly encouraged because of the disproportionately higher rates of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 among the Hispanic, Black, and Indigenous American populations.

My relief, however, was short-lived. We continue to see troubling inequities with new reports showing that many people from the minority community are among the lowest currently receiving the new vaccines, and the highest to be hesitant about its safety and effectiveness. According to Pew Research Center¹, just 42 percent of Black adults are inclined to get vaccinated, compared to 63 percent of white adults and 83 percent of adult Asian Americans.

Continue reading “A Black Doctor and Scientist on Vaccinating Minorities” →

In Search of Equity: Rethinking Race and Racism in Science and Medicine

Posted on February 11, 2021June 8, 2021 by NIMHD

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Black History Month

In Search of Equity: Rethinking Race and Racism in Science and Medicine

By L. Ebony Boulware, M.D., M.P.H.
Chief, Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine
Director, Duke Clinical and Translational Science Institute
Duke University School of Medicine

Dr. L. Ebony Boulware

Recent events compel us to reckon, yet again, with the ongoing legacy of systemic racism in the U.S. The merciless murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black individuals through police violence reflect an epidemic of brutality that manifests ongoing and profound racially mediated structural social inequities in the U.S. Compounding this, the recent higher COVID-19 death rates among Black and Hispanic communities have made it clear that race-based structural inequities are directly tied to poor health and further threaten the lives of Black and other minoritized individuals.¹ These intersecting realities have brought many in the fields of science and medicine to consider how race and racism are harmfully operationalized through many aspects of our collective experiences. Continue reading “In Search of Equity: Rethinking Race and Racism in Science and Medicine” →