Page 20 - Morehouse School of Medicine Magazine

COVID-19

Sharing in the Fight

As COVID-19 rages on, MSM plays a leading role

in addressing the inequities of a pandemic that

disproportionately aects communities of color.

S THE COUNTRY FACES DOWN the dual Using data from 135 of Georgia’s 159 The biggest grant came from the U.S.
Apandemics of coronavirus and racial counties, the researchers found that for Department of Health and Human Ser-
injustice and grapples with their outsize every 1 percent increase in the proportion vices’ (HHS’s) Office of Minority Health
impact on communities of color, More- of the county’s Black population, there (OMH), which awarded MSM $40 million
house School of Medicine is leading the was a 2.3 percent increase in the county’s for a three-year initiative called the Na-
way toward solutions—and garnering confirmed case rate of COVID-19. tional Infrastructure for Mitigating
significant financial support for the work. “This is not because race the Impact of COVID-19 With-
MSM has attracted more than $50 mil- itself makes a person more in Racial and Ethnic Minority
lion in gifts and grants to support and vulnerable to coronavirus; Communities (NIMIC). The
expand the institution’s work to create and some people think that NIMIC will create a stra-
advance health equity for communities of means being Black increas- tegic network of national,
color and other vulnerable populations. es risk. It’s not because state, territorial, tribal and
That mission has taken on greater res- you are Black, but because local organizations to deliver
onance in the current climate, as Black of where you are Black,” said COVID-19-related information
people are five times more likely to be hos- MSM President and Dean Val- to the communities hardest hit
pitalized for COVID-19 than their white erie Montgomery Rice, M.D. by the pandemic.
counterparts, according to the Centers for “The disproportionate impact stems from MSM also has received support from
Disease Control and Prevention. systemic inequities in our economy and Google Inc. in the form of $1 million to
MSM’s own research bears out this our health care system.” the Satcher Health Leadership Institute
disparity. Dominic Mack, M.D., director of With the financial support of govern- to study the racial impact of COVID-19.
the National Center for Primary Care, and ment agencies, foundations and corpora- Google engineers and data scientists will
Anne Gaglioti, M.D., associate professor of tions, MSM will embark on several new work full time with SHLI to build a de-
family medicine, analyzed infection rates initiatives designed to address, measure tailed, real-time demographic database
at the county level throughout Georgia. and beat back the coronavirus pandemic. with a breakdown of the virus’s impact

18 Primarily Caring Fall 2020

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