NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — One of the prizes of New Orleans is its history. The New Orleans Public Library has a world class archives department.
Recently, Dr. Kevin McQueeney, a local educator and author, did some research using the archives at the public library to find the history of racial health disparities.
“There is this large gap, in healthcare equity, where Black New Orleanians have much higher rates for disease and mortality and lower life expectancy. It reflects the larger American experience for Black Americans all over the United States,” says McQueeney.
African Americans have been victim to healthcare disparity since the country’s inception. From a lack of healthcare access in neighborhoods of color, to high rates of homicide, obesity, heart disease and cancer; health is not equal.
There have been alarming findings over the years. For instance, a recent 2016 study, found that a large percentage of medical students have inaccurate feelings that Black people are more pain tolerant than white people.
Looking at these disparities across the country, and specifically in New Orleans, McQueeney published a book titled “City Without Care: 300 Years of Racism, Health Disparities and Healthcare Activism in New Orleans.”
“The first Black surgeon was an enslaved person at Charity Hospital. Later on in history, during the 1960s, the federal government is now requiring integration of healthcare. If healthcare institutions at this time do not integrate, they are going to lose federal funding. One of the most shocking things I found was a letter from the New Orleans Health Department and the mayor of New Orleans, where they discuss if they should just lose federal funding. In the margins of the letter, someone had drawn a rifle and used a racial slur on it,” explains McQueeney.
The book accounts for recent occurrences such as coronavirus and much earlier racial health disparities in the 1930s, when African American people in New Orleans had mortality rates double that of white people. Through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the mortality rate improved by 1970. However, McQueeney sees a reversal of the improvement.
“We have this story in America about progress and it’s reversal. How do you explain something like that where the health gap disparity closed and widened again in the past 15 years,” says McQueeney.
On Saturday, Aug. 26, The New Orleans Public Library and McQueeney will talk about the findings of the book at the Nora Navra Library in the Seventh Ward.
The book can be purchased on Amazon.
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