Douglas County Board of Health: Racism a "Public Health Crisis"

The Douglas County Board of Health on Wednesday adopted a resolution calling racism a "public health crisis."

At the meeting in Omaha, Douglas County Health Director Adi Pour said the resolution responds to the issues of racism raised in recent weeks. Pour pointed to health disparities between different racial groups in Douglas County as evidence of the problem.

“Whites on an average have a life expectancy of ten more years than African Americans. We have talked about infant mortality and we have tried to address it over many years. But we still know that a baby born to an African American mom has close to a three-fold higher chance to die before their first birthday compared to a white American,” Pour said.

Pour said the coronavirus pandemic is also hitting minorities disproportionately hard. And board President Chris Rogers compared the response to the coronavirus to how racism needs to be addressed.

“The pandemic was a crisis that warranted a certain amount of response. That response treated monetary resource, policy change, behavior change. And I think there’s significance when you call this a crisis because of the behavior and other changes that need to come with it,” Rogers said.

The resolution calls for actions including anti-bias training for public health workers, and developing policies to evaluate the racial impact of health policies. No one at the meeting spoke against the resolution. Reaction was more mixed in the comments section of Facebook Live, where the meeting was streamed. There, for example, one person wrote “Racism isn’t a health problem, idiots,” while another called the resolution “A step in the right direction.”

Editor's note: an earlier version of this story incorrectly said it was the Douglas County Health Department that had adopted the resolution.