My guest today is Nicole D Vick, who has spent her career as an advocate and educator in the field of public health.

Specifically, we’re going to talk about race and public health. The American Public Health Association began tracking declarations of racism as a public health crisis in the summer of 2020. Since then, over 260 cities, counties, public health agencies and academic institutions have declared racism a public health crisis and have committed resources to dismantling the systems that have reinforced health inequity. The goal is more equitable policies, practices and allocation of resources.

And of course, the current administration in Washington DC is doing everything in its power to roll back those initiatives and allocations.

Here are just a few public health data points from some 2024 Kaiser Family Foundation research:

• Life expectancy: native americans (at 67.9 years) and Black Americans (at 72.8 years) have a shorter life expectancy compared with White people (at 77.5 years).

• Childbirth mortality - Black and native infants were at least two times as likely to die as White infants as of 2022. Black and Indigenous women also had the highest rates of pregnancy-related mortality.

Living and working in South Central Los Angeles, Nicole D Vick brings a wealth of lived experience along with her research and decades of work in public health.

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