The Coronavirus Exposed Colorado’s Racial Inequities in Health Care

“I’m still cautious,” Goree said. “I think that more people should take advantage of it.” 

Deidre Johnson, its CEO and executive director, hopes to see concrete changes.

“I think the system is starting to admit it, but the question is what’s being done about it? I think that varies,” said Johnson, who sits on the state’s health equity response team. “Some recommendations are being worked on, but to be honest, the real work that nourishes my heart is action.”

When the pandemic hit, unemployment, evictions and food insecurity all spiked.

“You name the kind of area of life, we are feeling it,” she said.

The center was able to raise and give out $82,000 to families who needed rent and food assistance, prescriptions and emergency money to pay bills.

Johnson said economic opportunities are critical.

“If we don’t do things really fundamental to change how our systems work, we’ll keep having these disparities. And then the next COVID will wreak the same havoc,” she said.

At Denver Health, a large safety-net hospital that has treated many COVID-19 patients, Dr. Cory Hussain is also thinking about how to get people of color to see doctors more frequently, to try and control pre-existing conditions and maybe avoid the worst of diseases like COVID-19.

“These are conditions that are chronic, and they’re managed by a physician who can, first of all, diagnose these and second of all, monitor and treat them,” Hussaid said. “These patients are being admitted to the hospital, have these conditions that are not very well managed due to access to healthcare.” 

John Daley/CPR News

That access to healthcare has to do with financial stability and insurance. But it also has to do with distrust stemming from decades of mistreatment by the medical establishment. One infamous example is the Tuskegee study, which involved doctors allowing Black men to die of syphilis. 

Patients who are people of color tend to go to the hospital when they are severely ill, but not before that, Hussain said.

“It’s kind of laid bare for even us physicians the systemic issues we have with systemic racism and access to care,” he said. 

For non-English speaking patients, access to care starts before they even enter a hospital or doctor’s office.