Marginal health equity for Black Californians suggests slow road ahead

By Sara Heath April 24, 2024 – It’ll take California longer than it’s even been a state—and longer than the US has been a nation—to close the racial health disparity and other gulfs in equity for Black folks, according to a report from the Black Policy Project, which looks at equity within the state. Given the slow rate of improvement Black Americans have seen in equity since 2000, it would take 248 years to close the outcomes gap, the report showed. By comparison, the US has been a nation for 246 years; California has been a state for 174. These findings come as the US healthcare industry takes a pulse check on its health equity progress. Health equity work has been underway at many institutions for decades, but the rise in value-based care contracts, plus the disparities laid bare during the pandemic and America’s overall racial reckoning, has accelerated those efforts in the past four years. Dig Deeper This latest report, the “State of Black California,” published by the Black Policy Project out of the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, follows up on a similar report completed in 2007. The 2024 iteration shows that despite modest...