Pandemic Is Shining a Light on Health Disparities

I lay in bed, exhausted after a long day of seeing patients, helping convert our federally qualified health center to telemedicine, and trying to make sense of seemingly conflicting information communicated by the CDC and other government agencies. It was early April, and the frightening preliminary numbers illustrating the disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on black and brown communities(www.lohud.com) weighed heavily on my heart. As a family physician serving an ethnically diverse community in a predominantly white state, I worried about how this virus would affect my patients in the coming weeks and months, and whether their experiences would be documented equitably.