Health experts push to combat respiratory illnesses disproportionately impacting Black communities

(The Dallas Examiner) – “COVID-19 affected the Black community at an alarming rate,” said Debra Fraser-Howze, founder and board chair of Choose Healthy Life, during a recent webinar, “Somebody asked me when we were going to go back to normal, and my response was, ‘We’re not going back to normal. We died in normal. We’ll never go back to normal again.’” Black people are infected, hospitalized and die from COVID-19 at a higher rate than any other race. Because of a combination of past and current injustices and lack of access to care, the Black community has more vaccine hesitancy than any other race. Communities of color often lack access to testing and contact tracing. Related Stories During the webinar, Advancing Better Health Through Better Understanding: Community Narratives, Visions and Actions, the discussion focused on community-based interventions that support vaccine confidence for respiratory illnesses that are disproportionately impacting Black and African American populations. Those illnesses include COVID-19, flu, RSV and pneumococcal disease. “Health care outcomes in the Black community lag far behind health care outcomes in comparison to the White population,” Fraser-Howze stated. Black adults are 30% more likely to be obese and 60% more likely to be diagnosed with...