Health Consequences of Being Black in America

1 Out of Every 750

Number of Black Americans who have died from COVID-19 in the United States as of January 2021 — more than twice the number of people who are white.

2-3 Times

The chance Black Americans will die from heart disease compared with white Americans, the American Medical Association reports. A key reason is higher stress, which involves contributing factors such as discrimination and economic hardship, according to an American Psychological Association study.

3

Number of years on average that white Americans live longer than Black Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman.”

— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1966

“Racism is a public-health crisis.”

— Ibram X. Kendi, PhD, 2020. Kendi is founder of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University and author of How to Be an Antiracist.

“One of the many painful observations seen during the pandemic has been the health disparities related to COVID-19 disease severity and death among Black and brown communities. . . . At the core of these disparities are disproportionate rates of diet-related chronic diseases, such as obesity, hypertension, and diabetes, among these populations, which are driven by systemic racism.”

— Yolandra Hancock, MD, MPH, professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute of Public Health