CDC Employees Call on Agency to Declare Racism a Public Health Crisis

More than 1,000 employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have signed a letter calling on the agency to declare racism a public health crisis and to address “ongoing and recurring acts of racism and discrimination” against the organization’s black employees.

“At CDC, we have a powerful platform from which to create real change,” the letter, obtained by NPR, reads. “By declaring racism a public health crisis, the agency has an unprecedented opportunity to leverage the power of science to confront this insidious threat that undermines the health and strength of our entire nation.” 

The letter, addressed to CDC Director Robert Redfield and dated June 30, cites the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks, as well as COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on the black community — data, though incomplete, suggests black and Latino people in the U.S. are at least two times more likely than white people to die from COVID-19 and three times more likely to get sick — as “just the most recent and tragic symptoms of the long-festering disease of racial discrimination and oppression in the United States.”

The failure to address racism’s relationship to health problems is a key reason that the United States has seen little progress in addressing disparate care over the past 50 years, the letter says.