Assistant Professor Ragan Johnson's article "COVID-19 and Black America The intersection of health equity and the NP workforce" can be found in the latest issue of The Nurse Practitioner. Jewel Scott, MSN '06 and PhD '20, and Schenita D. Randolph, assistant professor, were collaborative authors of the article.

Excerpt

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) disproportionately impacts Black Americans. While social contributors to health have been widely discussed, conversations of foundational contributors such as systemic racism, explicit bias, and implicit bias are also critical. NPs are a ready workforce equipped with the leadership, skills, and abilities to contribute to achieving health equity. The disproportionate toll of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, on Black Americans has stimulated robust conversations around racial and ethnic health inequities. However, as Waite and colleagues stated, “Race itself does not drive disparate outcomes—rather, racism is the culprit.” Structural racism is a foundational contributor to how systems and societies perpetuate discrimination based on race. These discriminations, seen in housing, credit, employment, media, criminal justice, and health care, leave Black individuals vulnerable to poorer health outcomes. Therefore, structural racism and its distillations must be treated as a social determinant of health.