COVID-19 has hit Kentucky, Lexington’s black population especially hard. Why?
The COVID-19 outbreak has had an oversized impact on the black population in Kentucky and Fayette County, recently released data of those infected show.
About 12 percent of people who have died from COVID-19 statewide were black, Gov. Andy Beshear said Wednesday. But only 8.3 percent of the state’s population is black.
Data from Lexington-Fayette County Health Department released Thursday shows that roughly 30 percent of the county’s more than 188 coronavirus patients are black. Yet, black people are only 15 percent of Fayette County’s population.
Overall, the health department reported five new cases Thursday and no new deaths. To date, seven people from Kentucky’s second-largest county have died from complications due to the illness.
Moreover, black patients tend to get sicker than white patients with the highly-contagious respiratory illness, county health department data shows.
Roughly 30 percent of black patients were hospitalized from complications from the virus compared to 13 percent of white patients, according to the data.
Overall, 18 percent of Fayette County coronavirus patients were hospitalized.
On Thursday, the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department held an online round table on Facebook to discuss the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on the black community.
Devine Carama, a hip hop artist and community activist, said higher poverty rates in the black population mean less access to health care and worse health outcomes.
Carama said when he was younger and poorer going to the doctor was a luxury he couldn’t afford.
“It was my living conditions that kept me from the doctor’s office,” Carama said. “You are already robbing Peter to pay Paul, so you don’t go.”
Stubborn, long-standing health inequalities between whites and blacks in Kentucky are also a likely reason for the coronavirus’ out-sized impact on black Kentuckians, health data shows.
Data from the Kentucky Office of Health Equality, housed in the Kentucky Department for Public Health, shows that black Kentuckians are more likely to die of asthma, have higher mortality rates for certain cancers and have higher rates of diabetes than whites. The Centers for Disease Control has identified age and underlying health conditions such as diabetes, chronic lung disease as well as cancer as risk factors that could contribute to serious complications from the virus.
The 2017 Kentucky Minority Health Status report included these key findings:
- Blacks are more likely to die from asthma than any other racial group.
- The age-adjusted mortality rate for diabetes is greater for blacks than whites.
- Blacks have a higher mortality rate for cerebrovascular disease— diseases or conditions that affect blood flow to the brain— than whites.
- Blacks have a significantly higher cancer mortality rate than whites for prostate, breast and colorectal cancer.
And most troubling, black men in Kentucky have the shortest life expectancy of all races and age groups, the report found. The report is issued biannually. The 2019 report has not yet been publicly released.
Research has shown a direct correlation between health outcomes and income and poverty, the report noted.
Black Kentuckians are much poorer than white Kentuckians.
U.S. Census data shows that black Kentuckians have the lowest household median income of all groups, at $30,418. Overall, the poverty rate for black Kentuckians is 31.4 percent, almost double that of whites in Kentucky at 17.1 percent.
But access to health care and insurance is also another key factor in determining health outcomes, the report’s authors noted.
Although the percentage of people uninsured in Kentucky has dropped from 14.3 percent in 2013 to 5.1 percent in 2016, the number of Black Kentuckians without health insurance is higher than the state average. Nearly 9 percent of Black Kentuckians age 18-64 are uninsured, according to 2016 federal census data. Hispanics in Kentucky are the least insured with nearly 30 percent of that population without health insurance.
Access to health care helps people manage chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma and cardiovascular disease. Consistent health care access also means more cancer screening tests such as pap smears and colonoscopies, the report found.
Kacy Allen-Bryant, the chairwoman of the board of the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department and a public health nurse, said during Thursday’s Facebook live discussion there is also reluctance by many in the black community to go to the doctor when symptoms first appear, regardless of the illness.
“We don’t often go when it’s in an early phase when many of the complications can be prevented,” Allen-Bryant said.
Allen-Bryant said cultural differences may have also been a factor in spreading the respiratory illness.
“We are very social,” Allen-Bryant said. Sunday family dinners are a favorite. Weekend BBQs in the spring and summer are typical.
But people need to know that now is not the time for social gatherings, she said.
“I think people think, ‘We’re family we can visit,’” Allen-Bryant said. “But you can’t do that.”
Carama said he’s also concerned that young people — all young people regardless of race—aren’t getting accurate information about COVID-19.
“I think young people aren’t taking this as seriously and I think they are misinformed,” Carama said. The information teens are getting is often limited to internet memes, he said.
Kevin Hall, a spokesman for the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department who hosted the online forum, said the health department will do more outreach and host more discussion about COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on the black community.
Other cities and some states are also reporting similar, alarming trends of disproportionate coronavirus infection rates or deaths in black populations as demographic data on those infected has started to trickle out in the past several days.
In Michigan, black people have died at more than eight times the rate of white people. That’s also true in Illinois, where data shows that black people are also dying at six times the rate as white people.
In Louisiana, recently released data on coronavirus deaths show an even starker disparity between white and black mortality rates.
On Monday, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said 70 percent of the people who have died from the respiratory illness in that southern state were black.
But many states are still lagging in collecting or releasing demographic data on COVID-19 patients.
Kentucky only knows the race of 66 percent of its confirmed cases, but reported 80 percent of those cases are white, 11.76 percent are black, 2.5 percent are Asian and 2.28 percent are multi-racial, state officials said Wednesday.
