Black Nurses & Healthcare Equity
“The system is broken. System was broken before. But all of the fault lines and all of the different things that we knew, especially as people in public health and people in nursing, you know it exists, but to see the sheer amount of illness and death in communities of color, in particular, that are all the result of systemic racism and structural barriers to care, to dignity, to financial and social mobility, it was really hard.”
- Karelle Webb, on managing infection control at a network of community health centers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought national attention to something that Black nurses have always known: Black communities and other historically marginalized communities face many inequalities in health and healthcare services. Since 2012, the average number of years that a person is expected to live (life expectancy) has decreased for all Chicago residents except white Chicagoans.1 These inequalities are not new, but have been shaped over time by social, political, and cultural factors that have challenged Black Chicagoans throughout the city’s history.
From the late 1800’s until today, Black nurses have been some of the most significant healthcare professionals working to care for people of color in Chicago. Black nurses have often been the primary healthcare workers serving people of color, and they remain the best healthcare workers with the cultural understanding and trust to help Black patients and communities effectively.
Read through this chapter to learn more about health inequalities and how Black nurses have worked to address them.
Background image: Teddy "Stat" Phillips (artist), She the Culture and She is Saving the World, [Seattle] : Amplifier, 2020. Accessed through Library of Congress online catalog, 2020632236, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2020632236/