Robert Fullilove, an expert on public health at Columbia University, tells Axios' Dion Rabouin that racial disparities in health shouldn't surprise anyone because their causes are baked into multiple aspects of American society.
"Let's just see racism as one of the ways that determines where you're gonna live and what kinds of conditions you're going to be exposed to," he said in an interview for "Axios on HBO."
"If race is the factor that really dictates what kind of job you're gonna have, what kind of education you're gonna have to qualify you for some kind of employment, almost all the things that put you at a disadvantage — almost everything that's gonna put you on the margins of society — are also gonna be the set of things that put you at unique vulnerability and risk of being impacted by an epidemic, such as the one we're seeing right now."
"In a society where the quality of your health depends on how much money you can spend to assure your health, why are we surprised that folks with little money are also folks who are most likely to become sick? And then COVID-19 comes along."
