MLK, Health Justice, and the LA Fires (Happy MLK Day) [Self-Love Letter]
Hey #PhyteWell Fam,
Happy MLK Day! That’s the only event I’m acknowledging today (I don’t care, I don’t care)!
Please scroll down for:
the recording of our last #PhyteWellWednesday Workshop,
then scroll a little more for the IRL (Insight, Resource, and Lesson) prompt
and keep scrolling for some thoughts on MLK, health disparities and LA wildfire recovery
Getting WELL IRL!
One Insight Prompt:
What have you done in the last week to impact a wellness system in your family or community for the better?
One Resource:
Check out our new Aid and Advocacy Corner at bytewellness.com/aid. Please fill out the form to request or offer specific types of support. After you submit your form, you’ll hear from me by email (drwuse@bytewellness.com) or text (866)717-1919 . Our goal is to connect #PhyteWell Community members who need support with #PhyteWell community members who are eager to support. Whatever the country’s leadership is up to, we’ve got us!
One Lesson:
Happy Monday!
With fires and snow storms across the country, please stay safe!
Instead of a quiz, please complete our Mutual Aid Survey. No wrong answers!:
MLK, Health Justice, and the LA Fires
Before his untimely assassination, the Reverend Dr. King repeatedly reminded us to prioritize health equity and wellbeing at the population level. In one of his most popular quotes about health, he told the press at a 1966 Medical Committee for Human Rights Meeting in Chicago, IL that the ongoing segregation of State-funded hospitals was shameful. He went on to say: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman”.
Mind you, Dr. King felt the need to make this statement fully 12 years after the Brown v. Board Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregated public schools. More than a decade after the highest court in the land declared segregated education facilities to be unfair to Black students, government-funded hospitals were still refusing care to Black patients who needed it. MLK called a spade a spade: that 1966 reality was unjust and unacceptable.
My thoughts leap immediately to an unjust circumstance of our era: the recent wildfires that devastated large parts of Los Angeles County, including the historically Black neighborhood of Altadena, CA and its neighboring Pasadena, CA.
These may seem unrelated to MLK and issues of health equity, but walk with me here.
Natural disasters like wildfires act as a disease accelerant. Through their massive loss of wealth, housing security and financial resources, natural disasters disadvantage all of their victims across multiple categories of social determinants of health.
Meanwhile, Black victims of the LA fires are most at risk for the health fall-out given the documented structural racism in natural disaster recovery. Although natural disasters don’t discriminate against whomever is in their path, studies show that recovery institutions (like FEMA) and their procedures do.
A research study that reviewed FEMA grants from 1,621 counties from 2012-2015 found that counties containing significant quantities of Black, Latino and Native American residents received less FEMA aid than counties containing majority White residents even when they sustained the same amount of damage.
MMmm.
Let that marinate.
On today of all days… let that breathe.
To be clear, this racially discriminatory distribution of Federal Funds is a form of structural racism). It creates a chain reaction that grows the wealth gap between Black and White communities. According to another study in the Journal of Social Problems, Black and Latino survivors of American natural disasters lose $26,000 and $29,000 of wealth , while White survivors gain $126,000 of wealth after disasters (https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spy016).
That wealth gap and the lack of neighborhood re-investment it signals can translate directly and indirectly into more disease and earlier death for Black and Latino survivors of natural disasters.
That’s heavy. AND, that is why we are standing up for Black LA fire victims (especially those in the historically Black Altadena community).
In addition to our usual Black women’s wellness resources, we’re sharing LA fire fundraising and mutual aid resources in our brand new AID & ADVOCACY Corner.
There, you’ll find a directory of hundreds of GoFundMe Pages for Black families in the historically Black neighborhood of Altadena (and neighboring Pasadena, CA). Please SHARE AND SUPPORT as you can! Click here to check out the directory: (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pK5omSsD4KGhjEHCVgcVw-rd4FZP9haoijEx1mSAm5c/htmlview?emci=50947eb8-44d0-ef11-88d0-0022482a9d92&emdi=d0ef8c38-4ad0-ef11-88d0-0022482a9d92&ceid=6020436#).
If you know of any more aid or advocacy projects we should support as a #PhyteWellCommunity, please email (drwuse@bytewellness.com) or text me at (866)717-1919.
Happy Healthy Thriving,
Dr. Wuse