The last several months have left us with heavy hearts and sadly reinforce the brutal reality that our communities of color remain vulnerable to racism and senseless violence, even during a pandemic. Racism, among its other injustices, is very much a healthcare issue. As such, our organization can’t in good conscience turn a blind eye to racism in our culture while trying to build healthier communities. People of color are more likely to face negative social determinants of health, like access to healthy foods and unaffordable housing. They are more likely to get sick and die from most health conditions and are less likely to access quality care. This leads to health inequities that need to be addressed. We see this with the current COVID-19 pandemic which disproportionately affects black and brown communities.
This is a time of immense challenge, but from challenge comes opportunity. We hear the needs of our community. Let’s work together to facilitate understanding, healing, and education in our communities and together develop ways to combat these issues through our daily actions. While structural racism is a multifaceted problem without a simple solution, every individual can make a difference. As a healthcare organization, we can focus on what we do every day and commit to changing the business of healthcare for the better. We are focused on educating our communities of color to close the health disparity gap. We work with community organizations like the City Mission of Schenectady to expand our hiring practices to include the less-advantaged. And we’ve created scholarship programs for at-risk youth to encourage their educational pursuit of a career in healthcare. Discrimination of any kind is unacceptable. We strive to have our practitioners and care teams reflect the diversity of our family of patients. As leaders in the healthcare industry, we have to ask ourselves what should we do and are we doing enough? We stand here together with you, our patients, our staff, and our communities to make a positive difference and to work for change.
~Community Care Physicians
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