The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has outlined specific steps that governments should take to address racism in health care.
Racism and bias have global implications on the right to health. Racism can affect the social determinants of health such as income, employment, education, food, and housing, the benefits and burdens of financing and distribution of health resources, whether people have access to important health information, and interactions with health care providers who may be quick to dismiss the health concerns of patients of color, especially women.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made this even clearer, as many government public health measures have further entrenched systemic racism.
For these many reasons, CERD, the UN’s anti-racism body, decided to provide governments with clearer guidance on what steps they should take to comply with their obligations to ensure that everyone has equal access to the right to health.
Many of the new guidelines are consistent with recommendations provided to CERD by Human Rights Watch based on its research.
Human Rights Watch, along with other civil society organizations, have repeatedly called on European governments to collect so-called equality data disaggregated by multiple grounds of discrimination, including race and ethnic origin, to address systemic racism, including in health care. CERD’s new guidelines underscore the importance of collecting this type of data to address racial inequality and discrimination.
The report also found that US federal and state governments have failed to address structural racism and discrimination, and to eliminate barriers that contribute to higher rates of preventable cervical cancer deaths among Black women. CERD’s new guidelines call on governments to take steps to eliminate these barriers, including unequal access to health-related information.
The general recommendations provide a roadmap for an anti-racist approach to health care that acknowledges the ongoing impact of the legacies of colonialism and slavery, and which governments should implement in their national systems.
