Senate Aging Committee examines COVID-19 and racial health disparities

Jul 22, 2020 - 03:33 PM
senate-hearing-rountable

The Senate Special Committee on Aging yesterday held a hearing on the COVID-19 pandemic and seniors, which focused on racial health disparities.

Former AHA Board Chair Gene Woods, president and CEO of Atrium Health in Charlotte, N.C., testified about Atrium’s initiatives to address the needs of minority and underserved communities, including the use of geospatial hotspotting to identify zip codes most impacted by COVID-19 and direct needed resources to those areas. 

Woods also noted the benefits of telehealth in reaching underserved communities and advocated for extending its expanded use beyond the pandemic.

Also testifying at the hearing were Dominic Mack, M.D., director of the National Center for Primary Care at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta; Mercedes Carnethon, vice chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago; and Rodney Jones Sr., CEO of East Liberty Health Center in Pittsburgh.

Related News Articles

Headline
AHA podcast: How Duke University Is Fighting Hypertension Through Community Collaboration
Duke University’s Anna Tharakan, lead project manager on Closing the Gap on Hypertension Disparities, and Bradi Granger, Ph.D., research professor at Duke…
Headline
RFK Jr. says CDC will no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children, pregnant women
Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. May 27 announced in a post on X that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
Headline
FDA to limit COVID-19 vaccine to people over 65, others at high risk for serious illness
Leaders of the Food and Drug Administration May 20 announced new guidelines for administering the COVID-19 vaccine in a paper published by the New England…
Headline
Study finds driving with COVID-19 raises crash risk by 25%
A study published April 8 by the Public Library of Science’s Journal of Global Public Health found that driving while infected with COVID-19 raises the risk of…
Headline
Study: Early pregnancy blood pressure patterns linked to hypertension risk up to 14 years later
A National Institutes of Health study published April 2 found that blood pressure patterns observed during the first half of pregnancy can determine a woman's…
Headline
Study finds social factors explain poorer cardiovascular health in rural areas 
A study published March 31 by the National Institutes of Health found that adults living in rural areas have worse cardiovascular health than those in urban…