Lee, Pressley, Warren Reintroduce Bold Legislation to Confront Structural Racism as a Public Health Crisis

Press Release

Today, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA-13), Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) reintroduced the Anti-Racism in Public Health Act, a bicameral bill to declare structural racism a public health crisis and confront its public health impacts through two bold new programs within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"The COVID-19 public health and economic crisis has illustrated the painful legacy of systemic racism in our country," said Congresswoman Lee. "Black, Brown, and other communities of color are dying at disproportionate rates from this pandemic. We have a moral responsibility to not only confront, but dismantle and denounce centuries of racism in our public health system. We must give this issue the urgency it deserves and declare racism a national public health crisis. Rep. Pressley, Senator Warren, and I remain committed to implementing comprehensive legislation that reverses course and delivers justice for our communities."

"Structural racism is a public health crisis that continues to ravage Black, Brown and indigenous communities, deny us access to quality health care, and exacerbate the longstanding racial disparities in health outcomes," said Congresswoman Pressley. "To confront and dismantle the racist systems and practices that create these inequities, we need robust, comprehensive research on the public health impacts of structural racism and policy solutions to bring an end to these disparities once and for all. Congress must pass our bill, which is exactly the type of bold, responsive legislation we have a mandate to deliver. Our communities deserve nothing less."

"It's clear that COVID-19 has exacerbated decades of disparities in health outcomes for Black and Brown people," said Senator Warren. "My bill with Congresswoman Pressley and Congresswoman Lee to create anti-racist federal health policy that studies and addresses these deep disparities in health outcomes at their roots is how we start treating health disparities like the public health crises they are."

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it impossible to ignore how centuries of structural racism have created deep disparities in health outcomes for Black and Brown communities: Black and Brown people are nearly three times more likely than white people to contract COVID-19 and one to two times more likely to die from the disease. People of color are also disproportionately affected by chronic health conditions such as diabetes, asthma, hepatitis, and hypertension; infant mortality; maternal mortality and morbidity; and police brutality -- and also less likely to be insured and have access to health care providers.

The federal government's failure to adequately collect and publish race and ethnicity data on COVID-19 testing, hospitalizations, deaths, and vaccinations has also demonstrated why comprehensive research is needed to study the health impacts of structural racism and to develop race-conscious public health approaches and reverse disparities that have plagued our nation for too long.

To help expand research and investment into the public health impacts of structural racism, as well as to require the federal government to begin actively developing anti-racist health policy, Congresswoman Pressley, Senator Warren, and Congresswoman Lee have introduced the Anti-Racism in Public Health Act, which would:

Create a "National Center for Anti-Racism" at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to declare racism as the public health crisis that it is and further develop the research base and knowledge in the science and practice of anti-racism. The Center would undertake such activities as:
Conducting research, collecting data, awarding grants, and providing leadership and coordination on the science and practice of anti-racism in the provision of health care, the public health impacts of systemic racism, and the effectiveness of interventions to address these impacts.
Creating at least three regional centers of excellence in anti-racism.
Educating the public on the public health impacts of structural racism and anti-racist public health interventions.
Consulting with other Centers at the CDC to ensure that scientific and programmatic activities initiated by the agency consider structural racism in their designs, conceptualizations, and executions.
Create a Law Enforcement Violence Prevention Program within the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the CDC. Physical and psychological violence perpetuated by law enforcement results in deaths, injuries, trauma, and stress, and disproportionately affects marginalized populations. This bill would take a public health approach to combating police brutality and violence by creating a dedicated law enforcement violence prevention program at the CDC.
The Anti-Racism in Public Health Act, which was originally introduced by the lawmakers in September 2020, is co-sponsored by Reps. Kathy Castor, Jerrold Nadler, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Mark Takano, Danny K. Davis, Sheila Jackson Lee, Brian Higgins, Jim Cooper, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Albio Sires, Juan Vargas, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Bobby L. Rush, Alcee L. Hastings, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Nikema Williams, Jamaal Bowman, Pramila Jayapal, Nydia M. Velázquez, Joyce Beatty, Cori Bush, Grace Meng, Earl Blumenauer, Mark DeSaulnier, C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, Adriano Espaillat, Terri A. Sewell, Donald M. Payne, Jr., Ilhan Omar, John Sarbanes, Doris Matsui, Adam Smith, André Carson, Katherine Clark, Steve Cohen, Judy Chu, Ritchie Torres and Senators Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Tina Smith (D-MN).

The bill is endorsed by: Attleboro Council on Human Rights; Attleboro Mayor Paul Heroux; Boston Medical Center; Center for Policing Equity; Center for Popular Democracy; Center for Reproductive Rights; Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health at UCLA; Community Catalyst; Conference of Boston Teaching Hospitals; Friends of the 7 Acts of Change; Hispanic Federation; Institute for Healing Justice and Equity; Justice in Aging; Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; NAACP; National Birth Equity Collaborative; National Medical Association; National Partnership for Women and Families; National Urban League; National Women's Law Center; People's Action; Physicians for a National Health Program; PolicyLink; Poverty and Race Research Action Council; Public Citizen; Social Security Works; UCLA's Covid-19 Task Force on Racism and Equity; UnidosUS; Union for Reform Judaism; We Must Count Coalition; WhattoExpect and Young Invincibles

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