Lisa Cooper - Why Are Health Disparities Everyones Problem?

In this commanding narrative, Dr. Lisa Coopergroundbreaking researcher, MacArthur Foundation Fellow, founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equityoutlines innovative health equity solutions that can move us toward a societal herd immunity where were tackling not just clinical disease but the deep-seated impacts of structural racism.

Garth Graham, MD, MPH, Global Head of Public Health, Google Inc. / former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health, US Department of Health and Human Services

Dr. Coopers personal and professional journey is both riveting and inspiring; the scenes from her childhood in Liberia alone offer a global history lesson that resonates in present-day America. The unique experiences she brings to this unprecedented moment of the intersection of community health and racial reckoning make Why Are Health Disparities Everyones Problem? not only an essential read but a central question for our time.

Marc H. Morial, President/CEO, National Urban League

A compelling and enlightening record of Dr. Coopers journey of awakening to the origins and widespread impacts of health disparities and to the need for health equity in local and global communities. She shares the richness of her experiences and the piercing insights that have fueled her celebrated quest to unmask the underlying causes of and to propose solutions for the pervasive and persistent disparities whose deleterious effects in disadvantaged communities have broad effects on all others.

James R. Gavin III, MD, PhD, Emory University School of Medicine / Chairman Emeritus, Partnership for a Healthier America, and author of Dr. Gavins Health Guide for African Americans: How to Keep Yourself and Your Children Well

Drawing on a lifetime of global experiences and decades of research, Dr. Cooper convincingly argues that racial inequities are an enormous economic and moral burden that hurts all of us. With an evidence-informed optimism, Why Are Health Disparities Everyones Problem? is a desperately needed, innovative playbook to tackle the unfinished chapter in Americas struggle with racial inequity with renewed vigor and competence. It shows us where to begin in dismantling the upstream structural factors that create racial and socioeconomic differences in health.

David R. Williams, MPH, PhD, Chair, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health

Why Are Health Disparities Everyones Problem?

JOHNS HOPKINS

WAVELENGTHS

In classrooms, field stations, and laboratories in Baltimore and around the world, the Bloomberg Distinguished Professors of Johns Hopkins University are opening the boundaries of our understanding on many of the worlds most complex challenges. The Johns Hopkins Wavelengths series brings readers inside their stories, presenting the pioneering discoveries and innovations that benefit people in their neighborhoods and across the globe in artificial intelligence, cancer research, food systems, health equity, science diplomacy, and other critical areas of study. Through these compelling narratives, their insights will spark conversations from dorm rooms to dining rooms to boardrooms.

This print and digital media program is a partnership between the Johns Hopkins University Press and the Universitys Office of Research. Team members include:

Consultant Editor: Sarah Olson

Senior Acquisition Editor: Matthew R. McAdam

Copyeditor: Charles B. Dibble

Art Director: Martha Sewall

Designer: Matthew Cole

Production Supervisor: Jennifer Paulson

Publicist: Kathryn Marguy

Program Manager: Anna Marlis Burgard

JHUP Director and Publisher: Barbara Kline Pope

Office of Research Executive Director for Research: Julie Messersmith

LISA COOPER, MD, MPH

Johns Hopkins University Press
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2021 Johns Hopkins University Press

All rights reserved. Published 2021

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cooper, Lisa A., author.

Title: Why are health disparities everyones problem? / Lisa Cooper, MD, MPH.

Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. | Series: Johns Hopkins wavelengths | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020052638 | ISBN 9781421441153 (paperback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781421441160 (ebook) | ISBN 9781421441177

Subjects: MESH: Health Status Disparities | Vulnerable Populations | Health Equity | Healthcare Disparities | United States

Classification: LCC RA418 | NLM WA 300 AA1 | DDC 362.1--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052638

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

The Open Access edition of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License:

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WERE ALL FORMED BY OUR ENVIRONMENTS, experiences, and opportunities. In my case, those influences are rooted in my childhood in sub-Saharan Africa. Im descended from members of the rural West African Gola tribe as well as freed slaves and free Blacks who, with the aid of James Monroe, Francis Scott Key, and other members of the American Colonization Society, crossed the Atlantic aboard the USS Harriett in 1829 from Norfolk, Virginia, bound for the new colony of Liberia. The colonization of free Blacks in Africa was a divisive issue among Blacks and Whites in the 1800s, and prospects for the success of Liberia were uncertain. However, in the decades following its independence in 1847 from the American Colonization Society, my ancestors experienced Liberia as one of the most promising countries on the continent, fueled by income from natural resources, including rubber, iron, and timber, that bolstered its economic development. You can still see vestiges of that wealth today in the iron ore, gold, and diamond mining operations and a few beachfront resorts, but youll also witness the extreme poverty resulting from decades of conflict and its attending economic collapse, leaving people able to earn a mere $900 average annual household income as of 2017one-third of which came from Liberians living abroad.

Even as a child in the capital city of Monrovia in the 1960s and 1970s, I could see how opportunity and privilegeor the lack of themshape each individuals trajectory. I was keenly aware of how fortunate my family was in terms of our quality of life and good health. From inside the safety and comfort of the car I traveled in to school and my piano and ballet lessons, I watched little children even younger than I was carrying their siblings on their backs, walking barefoot, and needing to contribute to their familys incomes by selling things on the street.