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Concern is mounting around whether current health equity initiatives will be a flash in the pan or yield long term improvement on reducing disparities in hospice care among communities of color.
Racial disparities in end-of-life care access have long proliferated, but in recent years health care providers and regulators have been paying closer attention, particularly after the pandemic exposed cracks in a fragmented health care system.
Black Americans died at 1.4 times the rate of caucasians nationwide due to COVID-19, representing 15% of all pandemic-related deaths as of March 2021, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). American Indian or Alaska Native populations ranked as the second highest group of lives lost to the deadly virus, while Hispanic and Latino individuals represented the third, the CDC report found.