{"id":1453,"date":"2020-04-11T14:42:03","date_gmt":"2020-04-11T19:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/staging\/1734\/?p=1453"},"modified":"2020-04-11T14:42:03","modified_gmt":"2020-04-11T19:42:03","slug":"unequal-exposure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/unequal-exposure\/","title":{"rendered":"Unequal Exposure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On April 29, I will be moderating \u201cDemanding Equity:\nPlanning for Post-Disaster Recovery,\u201d a 45-minute session in a special\nthree-day virtual conference of the American Planning\nAssociation<\/a>, NPC20 @HOME<\/a>.\nThe online conference is an attempt to replace the experience of the canceled\nNational Planning Conference, which would have taken place in Houston, April\n25-28. For the first time in APA history, the annual event will not go forward\nas planned. Like numerous other conferences, it was untenable to assemble\nthousands of participants in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. But it is\npossible to provide a decent educational opportunity in its place by broadcasting\nand recording distance learning and letting participants ask questions\nremotely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But why do I mention this one session, when APA is offering\ntwo dozen? Because it touches on some issues so central to the social and\neconomic impacts of coronavirus, and speaks so directly to what planners and\nplanning can do as we recover from this experience, that I wanted to highlight\nthe subject in this post. It has been said often that the coronavirus does not\ndiscriminate. That may be true, but our society has done so and still does,\noften in ways people are reluctant to consider or admit. The result is that, as\nhappens with most disasters, minorities and low-income people, those with fewer\nopportunities in life or greater exposure to danger, are disproportionately\naffected. And so it will be when the histories of this pandemic are written.\nThe evidence is already stark enough for passionate discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To give credit where it is due, the session was the\nbrainchild of Adrian Freund<\/a>,\na veteran, semi-retired planner in Oregon. Before the NPC was canceled, however,\nAdrian was hospitalized (not because of coronavirus) and realized he would be\nunable to go to Houston. He reached out through a former president of APA, David Siegel<\/a>,\nalso of Oregon, to ask me to take over, and I agreed. We are on the same page\non this issue. When APA decided to replace NPC with NPC20 @HOME, this was one\nof the sessions they felt must be included, and I reassembled the speakers to\nmodify our plans for the new format. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of them have a ton of wisdom to contribute on the subject.\nShannon van Zandt<\/a> is\na professor of urban planning and department head at Texas A&M, and has\nauthored numerous articles and led many projects on subjects related to equity\nin disaster recovery, particularly in the Texas context in which she works. Marccus\nHendricks<\/a>, an assistant professor of planning at the University of\nMaryland, is a Texas A&M graduate who has focused on infrastructure issues\nand environmental justice, writing his doctoral thesis on stormwater management\nin Houston. Chrishelle\nPalay<\/a> is director at the HOME\nCoalition<\/a> in Houston. Obviously, the panel has strong Texas roots, but there\nare few states where one can get better insights into the impacts of\nenvironmental inequities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it is the screaming headlines of the past week that have\nbrought renewed attention to the issue in the context of coronavirus. In Chicago,\nwe have learned that African\nAmericans are dying from the virus at six times the rate of whites<\/a>. Gary<\/a>, a predominantly\nAfrican American city, is the new\ncoronavirus hot spot in Indiana<\/a>. It is also where it gets personal for me. A\n12-year-old granddaughter lives there and, as of yesterday (April 10), appears\nto have COVID-19 symptoms. Her mother called and was asked not to bring her to\na hospital, but to isolate her at home. She will not be tested because, as everywhere\nelse, this nation has\nnot gotten its act together on testing<\/a>. Will she even be included in the statistics,\nthen, as a known case? Good question. I have no idea how Indiana is tallying such\nnumbers. But she is in for a rough ride in the immediate future, and Gary and\nsurrounding Lake County are certainly not fully prepared. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what is happening in Chicago, as numerous commentators\nand public health officials have noted in the past week, is not only not\nunique, but to be expected. Detroit\nis emerging as a hotspot<\/a> with major disparities in racial impact. State\nhealth data reveal that, while blacks make up 14 percent of Michigan\u2019s\npopulation, they account for one-third of the cases and 40 percent of the deaths\nso far. In\nLouisiana<\/a>, with one-third of the population, blacks account for 70 percent\nof the deaths. New Orleans has clearly emerged as a southern hot spot for coronavirus\ninfections. Across the nation, one can find similar racial disparities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beneath those figures, however, are other disparities that\nweave in and out of racial and ethnic numbers. Age is perhaps the best-known\nfactor, but so are many others. People in low-income service jobs, for instance,\nto the extent that they are still working, are more dependent on public transit\nand much less likely to be able to work from home like white-collar professionals.\nPublic transit contributes greatly to mobility in urban centers, but does\nlittle for social distancing. It is still unclear just how transit will be\naffected for the long term, although it remains a vital link to jobs for many\nof the working poor. But coronavirus is clearly\nchallenging the economic viability of many transit systems<\/a>, one reason they\nwere the target of assistance in the CARES\nAct<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It goes without saying that health care workers are significantly more exposed, but they are not just doctors. Their ranks include nurses, nursing assistants, and many others, some with much lower incomes, who nonetheless are risking their lives every day. Some of them work in nursing homes<\/a>, which have not been the focus of any noticeable attention at the federal level. There are many ways to slice and dice the data to identify patterns of exposure, including those for access to health care, quite possibly the single most important factor driving disparities in this particular disaster. Lack of insurance coverage and inability to afford adequate health care leave many people untouched by the system and untested until it is too late. Poor or nonexistent health insurance coverage, especially for undocumented immigrants, accompanied by food deserts in many inner-city neighborhoods<\/a>, endemic poverty in many rural areas and small towns<\/a>, and exposure to job-related ailments<\/a>, can produce numerous chronic conditions that make exposure to a new virus fatal or disastrous instead of merely survivable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It remains remarkable, in view of these factors, that the Trump\nadministration can maintain its drumbeat of opposition\nto the Affordable Care Act<\/a>, including the recent\nrefusal to allow newly jobless Americans to sign up for coverage<\/a>. But this\nis one of many ways in which this nation, through both federal and state\npolicy, continues to resist expanded, let alone universal, health care coverage\nto shore up health care deficiencies for the most vulnerable among us. There is\nboth a meanness and short-sightedness that underlies much of this resistance.\nAs I noted just two weeks ago, these health care vulnerabilities, with all the\nracial and socioeconomic inequities they embody, form the weak\nlinks in the chain<\/a> of overall vulnerability for our communities when\npandemic strikes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that brings me back to the point of the session I will\nmoderate. One essential element of the planner\u2019s skill set should be demographic\nanalysis<\/a>. The coronavirus\npandemic<\/a> highlights the critical value of addressing\npublic health in comprehensive plans<\/a> and other efforts to chart the future of\ncities, counties, and regions. Issues of national health care policy may be\nwell beyond the reach of planners and their communities, but exposing the glaring\ndisparities that have been made evident as the data on coronavirus cases grows\nis critical to knowing how resilient our communities are or how resilient we\ncan make them. Access to health care is not merely a matter of insurance, as important\nas that is. It is also affected by the practices of local hospitals, the access\nto open spaces for densely populated areas<\/a>, environmental regulations controlling\nindustrial pollutants, public education around personal health, access\nto healthy food<\/a>, the quality\nof our food distribution systems<\/a>, and a myriad of other considerations that\ncan be addressed to one degree or another through local or regional planning\nand through policy commitments to social equity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is precisely why, as the White\nHouse dithers<\/a>, and federal management of the coronavirus crisis continues\nto fall short, dozens if not hundreds of mayors and governors and other local\nand state officials have stepped up to fill the gap. It is sad that there is not\nbetter national leadership in this crisis, but we are learning who our real leaders\nare. Enabling planners and other policy makers to support those officials with essential\nand meaningful data is an ongoing task, but if we are going to emerge from this\ndisaster in a better place, identifying the inequities that weaken our\ncommunities and finding ways to build resilience across those weak links is going\nto be essential. There is no good alternative. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jim Schwab<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On April 29, I will be moderating \u201cDemanding Equity: Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery,\u201d a 45-minute session in a special three-day virtual conference of the American Planning Association, NPC20 @HOME. The online conference is an attempt to replace the experience of the canceled National Planning Conference, which would have taken place in Houston, April 25-28. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[76,746,49,1540,541,81,366,109,178,630,1348,963,283,358,222,180,232,50],"tags":[632,1557,1537,364,1563,1502,1559,1507,1567,1040,1551,1550,1561,1556,1518,1046,1555,1520,1558,1560,384,1149,1562,1552,385,1566,1565,1554,10,30,1564,969,119,1553,1523,70],"class_list":["post-1453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activism","category-aging","category-chicago","category-coronavirus","category-disability","category-disaster-2","category-economics","category-environment","category-government","category-healthcare","category-medical","category-new-orleans","category-public-health","category-public-policy","category-resilience-2","category-science","category-transportation","category-urban-planning","tag-affordable-care-act","tag-african-american-2","tag-american-planning-association","tag-apa","tag-cares-act","tag-coronavirus","tag-coronavirus-testing","tag-covid-19","tag-demographic-analysis","tag-detroit","tag-discrimination","tag-equity","tag-food-deserts","tag-gary-indiana","tag-health-insurance","tag-hendricks","tag-home-coalition","tag-hospitals","tag-hot-spot","tag-lake-county","tag-louisiana","tag-low-income","tag-michigan","tag-minorities","tag-new-orleans","tag-newly-jobless","tag-nursing","tag-palay","tag-planning","tag-poverty","tag-public-transit","tag-racial-equity","tag-resilience","tag-van-zandt","tag-weak-links","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1455,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions\/1455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}