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Success of ‘slavery on the ballot’ measures could help incarcerated pregnant people of color

16Dec

By BNNNo Comments

Articles

Success of ‘slavery on the ballot’ measures could help incarcerated pregnant people of color

This story was originally published by The 19th Four of five states in the midterms voted to remove language from their constitutions that allow state prisons to require incarcerated people to work. By Katherine Gilyard, The 19th During the midterm elections, five states — Alabama, Oregon, Vermont, Louisiana, and Tennessee — put to vote initiatives purported to prohibit the use of slavery and indentured servitude as a punishment for crime, an antiquated allowance given by the 13th Amendment 157 years ago this month that prisons across the country still use. Four of the five voted to strike language from their constitutions that granted prison systems the right to force incarcerated people to perform labor with little to no pay in harsh and unregulated conditions. Louisiana,...

Rob Bonta Investigates Hospital Algorithms for Racial Bias

23Nov

By BNNNo Comments

Articles

Rob Bonta Investigates Hospital Algorithms for Racial Bias

By Mark Kreidler November 18, 2022 SACRAMENTO — California Attorney General Rob Bonta sailed to victory in the Nov. 8 election, riding his progressive record on reproductive rights, gun control, and social justice reform. As he charts a course for his next four years, the 50-year-old Democrat wants to target racial discrimination in health care, including through an investigation of software programs and decision-making tools used by hospitals to treat patients. Bonta, the first Filipino American to serve as the state’s top prosecutor, asked 30 hospital CEOs in August for a list of the commercial software programs their facilities use to support clinical decisions, schedule operating rooms, and guide billing practices. In exchange, he offered them confidentiality. His goal, B...

Knoxville’s Black Community Endured Deeply Rooted Racism. Now There Is Medical Debt.

1Nov

By BNNNo Comments

Articles

Knoxville’s Black Community Endured Deeply Rooted Racism. Now There Is Medical Debt.

(Originally published Oct. 28, 2022) By Noam N. Levey, California Healthline KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — When Dr. H.M. Green opened his new medical office building on East Vine Avenue in 1922, Black residents of this city on the Tennessee River could be seen only in the basement of Knoxville General Hospital. They were barred from the city’s other three medical centers. Green, one of America’s leading Black physicians, spent his life working to end health inequities like this. He installed an X-ray machine, an operating room, and a private infirmary in his building to serve Black patients. On the first floor was a pharmacy. Today the Green Medical Arts Building has been replaced by a tangle of freeways that were built after the city’s Black business district was bulldozed ...

12May

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News Briefs

Study: Telemedicine narrowed gap between Black and non-Black patients accessing primary care in 2020

A study released this week indicates the gap between Black and non-Black patients who visited their primary care providers narrowed significantly during the pandemic in 2020. Completed primary care visits among Black patients jumped to 80% in 2020 compared to about 60% in 2019. Completed visits among non-Black patients increased by about 10% — 60% in 2019 to 70% in 2020, according to the study. The findings came from researchers at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and were published in the Telemedicine and e-Health journal. The study used electronic health records from more than 1.9 million appointments and compared data during four 3-month periods in 2020 with data from 2019. The data was provided by 60 primary care clinics in the Philadelphia area. ...

28Apr

By BNNNo Comments

News Briefs

Black smokers love menthols — And Biden’s ban is closer to ashing them

Still love them menthols? Almost a year after pledging to extinguish the controversial cigarettes, President Joe Biden’s proposal to put out menthols once and for all just got closer to reality. The FDA released a plan today to ban menthol flavored cigarettes, and it has a lot of Black folks puffing — not just smokers. Blacks in the U.S. are more likely to suffer health issues related to smoking compared to White smokers who light up at about the same rate, CDC research has found. However, the CDC study shows nearly two thirds of Black smokers prefer menthol flavored cigarettes. Biden isn’t the first President to try to stomp out menthols. Former President Obama, who openly struggled with putting down the lighter, was urged by many Black health care professionals to ban...