Governments Need to Guarantee Health Care Without Racism

UN Body Stresses Importance of Tackling Racial Health Disparities

Matt McConnell
Researcher, Economic Justice and Rights Divisionmcconnell_m
mcconnell_m

Almaz Teffera
Researcher, Racism in EuropeAlmazTeffera

AlmazTeffera


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A doctor kneels while holding a sign during a "White Coats for Black Lives" tribute for George Floyd and other African-Americans who died in police custody, outside of a hospital in West Covina, near Los Angeles, California, US, June 11, 2020. © 2020 Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has outlined concrete steps governments should take to address racial discrimination in health care.

Racism and prejudice have a global impact on health rights. Racism can shape the social determinants of health, such as income, employment, education, food, and housing; the benefits and burdens of financing and distributing healthcare resources; whether a person has access to vital health information; and interactions with healthcare personnel, who may be quick to dismiss the health concerns of patients of color, and especially women.

The Covid-19 pandemic only made this clearer, as many governments’ public health responses further entrenched institutional racism.

For many of these reasons, the UN’s anti-racism body, CERD, decided to provide governments with clearer guidance on what measures to take to comply with their obligation to guarantee the equal enjoyment of the right to health for all.

Much of this new guidance aligns with suggestions that Human Rights Watch provided to CERD, drawing from our research.

Human Rights Watch has joined other civil society organizations in repeated calls to European governments to collect so-called equality data that is disaggregated by multiple grounds of discrimination, including race and ethnic origin, to address systemic racism, including in health care. CERD’s new guidance stresses the importance of collecting this type of data to address racial inequalities and discrimination.

We have also documented the failure of the US federal and state governments to address structural racism and discrimination and eliminate barriers contributing to high rates of preventable cervical cancer deaths for Black women. CERD’s new guidance urges governments to take steps to remove these barriers, including unequal access to health-related information.

The general recommendation is a roadmap for an anti-racist approach to health care that acknowledges the impacts of ongoing legacies of colonialism and enslavement, which governments should implement in their respective national systems.

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