Two Million Preventable Deaths in the Past 20 Years

Washington D.C.– The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI), a coalition of 150,000 African American churches, which constitute over 27.7 million churchgoers, are calling for the 118th& US Congress to take action against the stark state of health amongst Black Americans. According to the Washington Post article titled,& Black Communities Endured a Wave of Excess Deaths in the Past 2 Decades& (tinyurl.com/4x7dyku9), America’s Black communities experienced an excess of 1.6 million deaths (not counting the COVID-19 deaths).& Compared with their white counterparts during the past two decades. This is a devastating loss that comes at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, according to two recent studies by the JAMA Network that build on a generation of research into health disparities and inequity. Rev. Anthony Evans, President of the NBCI, forcedly states, “The Black Church must stand up and use its 27.7 million votes to protect the health of Black people in this 2024 election.” Since the 1985 Heckler Report, issued by then-Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Margaret Heckler, there have been only words and studies. With expert analysis, for the first time since her report, the National Black Health Agenda has moved to change those words into solid,...