“As we’ve learned what public health measures are effective, which treatments move the needle on survival, and how to implement and sustain telehealth as a viable alternative to in-person care, physicians, public health experts, and policy makers have had to compress a decision-making process that can take years into one that took weeks and sometimes days. Many of these policies have relied on knowledge of how our pre-COVID-19 system operated – a system that has been well documented to produce numerous racial health inequities.”

In this Health Affairs blog, Nathan T. Chomilo makes the case for assessing research and policy for racial equity at the start can help ensure physicians and researchers have, at the very least, stopped to ask how their work may or may not contribute to structural racism or advance racial justice. “It can help ensure more attention is paid to making the health system more antiracist instead of solely helping patients and enrollees more efficiently navigate a system that produces racist outcomes.”

Read more here.