By Maisha Simmons
All things being equal.
Those words take me back to my high school track career. We’d start the 100-yard dash in a line across the track. But the 200-yard dash had a staggered start so the person in the inside lane didn’t run a shorter race than the person in the farthest outside lane.
See, the 100-yard dash is short, and everyone has an equal chance. But the 200 involves more track curvature, so an adjustment is needed. We strive for something needed even more than equality, and that’s equity. Equality means treating everyone the same. Equity gives everyone the fair and just opportunity they need. Fairness and justice, then, demand equity.
More than seven months into this unprecedented pandemic, too many people still are being made to run that 200-yard race without the advantage of an equitable, staggered start. I can see it in my family. My job enables me to work from home; my husband, as an “essential” manufacturing worker, exposes himself daily to dangers I can avoid.
Inequity persists painfully at the state level. Overall, New Jersey is one of the healthiest states — eighth in the United Health Foundation’s America’s Health Rankings for 2019. Yet, when this is written, we’re first in the nation in COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 residents. African Americans and Latinx people in New Jersey are more likely to catch the virus than are whites, more likely to die from it, more likely to have jobs that don’t enable them to work from home and less likely to have Wi-Fi their kids can use to learn from home or to have transportation to a testing center.
To his credit, as racial and ethnic differentials emerged, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law requiring New Jersey hospitals to keep demographic information on COVID-19 patients, so we’ll know just how inequitable the impact of the virus is, and we can take steps aimed at understanding and eliminating inequity. Because here’s the thing: Health inequity was happening in New Jersey, and across the U.S., before the coronavirus hit.
Last year, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, released a groundbreaking report showing that New Jersey could avoid nearly 6,400 deaths a year if every resident has “a fair and just opportunity to live our healthiest life.” The report called for state-level policy changes across a range of areas — including housing, transportation and education.
New Jersey is one of the nation’s healthiest states in aggregate. But, of course, no one lives “in aggregate.” For example, a baby born to a Black family in New Jersey is twice as likely to die before a first birthday than a baby born to a white family. And, the average life expectancy in downtown Trenton is 75 years, compared with 87 just 13 miles away in Princeton.
The report found that such disparities often stem from unjust policies and practices that create barriers to good health that persist for generations. Examples range from bank lending practices that discriminate against people of color to labor protections that do not apply to — or are not enforced within service industries employing more women and people of color.
This pandemic is exposing broad and deep health inequities that have always been there — for those willing to look. When we consider these pernicious disparities in light of our nation’s reckoning with the legacies of racial injustice, white supremacy and systemic racism, creating a healthier, more equitable New Jersey takes on even greater urgency. The lesson is that equity must underlie every decision in New Jersey’s ongoing response, safe reopening and eventual recovery. Otherwise, the status quo will leave too many families in New Jersey vulnerable.
Returning to the ways things were can’t be an option. As we prepare for a second wave of the virus, equity principles that involve including in decision-making the people most affected by health and economic challenges, investing in strengthening public health, health care and social infrastructure to foster resilience and other key actions should guide our way.
The result will look more like the staggered start of the 200-yard dash than the straight-line start of the 100-yard dash – with such policies as extending nutrition assistance, strengthening the ability to use paid sick time when needed and providing more help to families excluded from receiving federal pandemic stimulus checks — for those forced into life’s outside lanes through no fault of their own.
As I write this, and watch my 5-year old-son complete a puzzle, I think about how the world he will grow up in will be marked by this dangerous, inequitable moment in time. I look to children for inspiration and I found this quote from a 15-year-old young lady on the website of Voices of Youth, a global community for young people to learn about issues and to express their opinions: “Although the concerns over the coronavirus are understandable, the stereotypes and exclusion are not.”
She eloquently laid the foundation for what we adults need to do. With all we now know, instead of making equity the exception – or even the goal – let’s make sure everyone has what they need to start the race.
Maisha Simmons is director of New Jersey Grantmaking at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest philanthropy in New Jersey and the largest focused on health in the nation.
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