Culture of Health Blog

"We are one of the only countries in the world that doesn't offer paid family and medical leave to those who need it."  —Robert Espinoza, Vice President of the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute

A study by Better Life Lab and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reconfirms that the U.S. status quo of gender roles, both at work and home, is not working for many families. Men are missing out on caretaking roles that enrich their lives and enhance the bonds with loved ones, while women are struggling with role overload, feeling unsupported and missing out on income and economic mobility.

In contrast to the U.S., many nations are advancing gender equity through solutions that benefit health, child development, family well-being, and advance racial equity, like paid leave. The United States can learn from the experiences of other nations that are implementing paid leave policies and find approaches that encourage fathers to take advantage of these policies.

EDITOR’S NOTE: A shocking 140,000 U.S. children lost a parent or grandparent caregiver to COVID-19 in just 15 months, according to a study in Pediatrics, with children of color much more likely to lose a caregiver than White children.

The harm can be long-lasting. These losses also dramatically increase responsibilities for the grandparents and other relatives who step in to provide care. In a powerful post last year, RWJF’s Jennie Day-Burget looked at what Generations United has learned about the challenges facing grandparent caregivers and the policies that would support them. As Congress debates budget reconciliation, we re-share her piece.

Mel Hannah spent most of his life in service to others. He was the first African American member of the Flagstaff City Council and vice chairman of the NAACP Arizona State Conference. And, in service to his beloved family, Mel and his wife Shirley, now in their 80s, have been helping their daughter Ashley raise her three children these past years. Sadly, however, Ashley contracted and tragically died from COVID-19 in May. Ashley’s untimely death left the Hannahs as the sole caretakers for her young boys, ages 5, 4, and 1.

The Hannahs’ story exemplifies the heavy toll of the pandemic, and especially the unique and often overlooked impact it is having on “grandfamilies” or kinship families. These are families in which children live with and are being raised by grandparents, other extended family members, and adults with whom they have a close family-like relationship, such as godparents and close family friends. Astonishingly, about 7.8 million children across the country live in households headed by grandparents or other relatives. Of that number, 2.7 million do not have a parent living in the household.

For generations, Indigenous Peoples have known that our health is intertwined with the health of our earth. Their worldview recognizes that being healthy means ensuring the natural resources that give us life are well cared for.

In contrast, Western mindsets tend to view the natural world as an inventory of useful commodities—separate from, and existing only in service to, humanity. Overusing, polluting, and extracting without considering the long-term impacts has created conditions that fuel health inequities in our country: contaminated drinking water, food scarcity, air pollution, and extreme heat are contributing to poor health and driving up disease, particularly in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.

Transforming our relationship with nature is key to building a sustainable, equitable, and healthy future for all. Through the forcible removal, violence, oppression, and other injustices Indigenous Peoples have experienced, they have remained powerful stewards for many of our natural resources. Their values, practices, and policies can show us the way to heal and reclaim the health of our earth and humanity.

Bring horses and Native youth together, and connections are built that can change lives. 

Deep ties to the land and close connections with animals have long helped to define Native American culture and make their way of life possible. In Fort Peck, Montana, Charlie Four Bear reclaimed that legacy by helping young people develop enduring relationships with horses. Four Bear (Dakota and Lakota) was an elder on the Fort Peck Indian reservation and a former police officer.

 “First they took away our land,” he said, describing the destruction that occurred as White settlers pushed West. “And then they took away our buffalo. And then they took our horses away.” The theft of so much Native culture, and the inequitable distribution of resources and opportunity that continues to this day, have damaged lives and undermined communities. The scars are apparent in the substance use and loss of hope revealed in one horrifying statistic: in a single year, 28 of 223 students at the local high school attempted suicide.  

October 1 ushered in the largest permanent benefits increase in the nearly 60-year history of what is known today as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). 

Our nation’s health is intertwined with the health of our rivers. And our rivers are unwell.

Drinking water, food, sanitation, clothing, transportation: almost everything we do involves an interaction with water. Yet many people in America take water for granted, not realizing that pollution, overuse, and climate change are putting a chokehold on the country’s natural water reserves—posing a direct threat to health, equity, and our way of life.

While many may think that new technology and innovation can resolve our water crisis, I believe that the solution lies with Indigenous practices that have fostered a holistic approach to living in relationship with the natural environment for millennia. Let me explain.

Our Relationship with Nature

Indigenous peoples share a common worldview of our relationship with the natural world. One that is guided by Indigenous values and principles of respect, cooperation and responsibility. These principles govern our individual and collective beliefs, behaviors and relationships—as given to us from our ancestors. While our customs may differ, our lived connection with our environment is universal. In sharp contrast, Western mindsets tend to view nature as a commodity, maintaining a relationship that is centered on resource-taking.

Darrick Hamilton, the Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy at The New School, has gained national recognition for shaping policy solutions to close the racial wealth gap, which refers to how hundreds of years of structural racism have deprived Black families of resources that accumulate and transfer from one generation to the next. The typical White family has 10 times the wealth of the typical Black family and seven times the wealth of the typical Latinx family. This stark and persistent racial wealth gap has harmed generations, driven disparities and appears to be growing, even after controlling for household characteristics and long-term education and income gains by Black people.

Hamilton’s early experiences provided an ethical orientation toward justice that shaped his career as an economist. Growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant while attending the Quaker-run Brooklyn Friends School exposed him to two worlds in which fundamentally similar people experienced markedly different life trajectories—primarily due to one group benefitting from greater resources than the other.

In this Q&A, he shares powerful insights on the impact of the racial wealth gap, strategies to address it, and reflections on how events of the past year are shifting narratives and providing hope for change.

Closing the Medicaid coverage gap would save lives, reduce costs, and help eliminate the racial and ethnic health disparities that have persisted for generations.   

But 12 states have refused to expand their Medicaid programs under the ACA, denying health care coverage to more than two million people—disproportionately people of color—who would qualify for the program if expansion was implemented in those states. These holdout states have refused to budge even as the federal government would cover the vast majority of expansion costs; even as Medicaid expansion states reap a variety of health and economic benefits; and even as the United States remains in the throes of a deadly pandemic.

The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated long-standing inequities in communities across the United States. To prepare for the next crisis, communities must build health equity infrastructure now.

One out of four people living in the United States today are either immigrants or children of immigrants. That’s approximately 85 million people, all of whom have connections to other countries and cultures. I’m one of those people. While I was born in Michigan and call New Jersey home today, I’ve spent considerable time visiting, living and working in Mumbai—the city my parents migrated from and where my public health career kicked off.

My connection to my country of origin—through ties to family and friends, time spent living and visiting there, language and culture—has profoundly shaped me and made me the person I am today. Perhaps most importantly, though, it has fostered a deep appreciation for the many different ways people experience, live day-to-day and move through the world—and the great possibilities for learning this brings. Years ago, as a new mother in the United States, I benefited enormously from Indian postpartum food traditions, lovingly prepared for me by my mother and mother-in-law. Now, with school-age children, I wonder which Indian teaching methods could be helpful, trading notes with my cousins and their kids.

These types of exchanges have enriched my life, and I often hear the same sentiment from friends and colleagues with immigrant backgrounds from various other countries. Moreover, they remind us that the way things are done in the U.S. isn’t the only way to do things. Countries around the globe, from Brazil to Malawi, are finding creative ways to overcome similar health challenges to the ones we’re facing in the U.S. By looking beyond our borders, we can uncover new inspiration for advancing health and health equity across our communities.