CDC Proclaims Racism Public Health Crisis, Calls for Health Equity

A new mandate out of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention has asserted systemic racism as a public health crisis, a step the agency says will build the foundation to improve health equity.

The statement from CDC’s director Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, acknowledged the racial health disparities seen in traditionally marginalized communities, including the Black, Latinx, and American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations.

“Yet, the disparities seen over the past year were not a result of COVID-19,” Walensky said in the written statement. “Instead, the pandemic illuminated inequities that have existed for generations and revealed for all of America a known, but often unaddressed, epidemic impacting public health: racism.”

Guests: 

Yele Aluko, MD, MBA
Chief Medical Officer
EY Americas

Dr. Yele Aluko is the chief medical officer in EY Americas Business Consulting Health Sector. He is a proven physician executive and leader, with 25 years of clinical and administrative health system experience prior to joining Ernst & Young LLP in 2016. He advises health system clients on strategy, business and clinical operations providing C-Suite executives insight on health industry megatrends and enterprise growth opportunities. He is a member of the EY COVID-19 Pandemic Response Team where he advises EY leadership on return-to-workplace strategies that prioritize the health and safety of its employees. As a member of the EY COVID-19 Enterprise Resiliency Team, he provides client insight on return-to-work strategies and solutions designed to preserve workforce well-being and safety during and in the aftermath of COVID-19. He is a leader in the development of the EY Point of View on Health Equity and has designed solutions for clients seeking competencies relevant to elimination of health disparities and achieving health equity.

As chief medical officer, he is a leader within EY physician enterprise operations and clinical integration practice where he assists health care system clients in physician engagement and alignment, provider accountability for value delivery, and defining and maximizing physician enterprise value for health care systems. He has supported organizations as they transition to integrated service line models of care delivery and recognizes the medical group’s impact on driving clinical quality initiatives.

He is a former structural heart cardiologist and senior vice president of heart and vascular services at a 15-hospital integrated regional health care system in the southeast USA. His responsibilities included governance of an enterprise-wide clinical strategy overseeing cardiovascular service line vision, growth, clinical integration, physician alignment and standardization of clinical, operational and business processes.

He obtained his doctor of medicine from the University College Hospital, Nigeria. He trained in internal medicine and cardiology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and in invasive and interventional cardiology at Cornell University and University of Massachusetts Medical Center. He is board certified by the Canadian Board of Internal Medicine and is triple-board certified in internal medicine, cardiology and interventional cardiology by the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Gil Bashe
Managing Partner, Global Health
Finn Partners

Gil Bashe’s healthcare career spans the patient, physician, provider, payer and policy sectors. At the center of Gil’s life and work is the belief that communication is part of the care. As managing partner of Finn Partners Global Health, he champions the talent and ideas of the nation’s “Healthcare Agency of the Year” (Holmes Report).

Prior to joining Finn Partners, Gil was Executive Vice President and Health Practice Head at Makovsky and Hill & Knowlton. During his tenure, he took on some of the health sector’s most vexing reimbursement and access challenges. As a result, he was named by PRNews as one of the nation’s “Top Crisis Communicators” and inducted into its Hall of Fame.

Gil is passionate about public health in everything he does. He serves on the NHLBI GENTAC Working Group examining how genetics impacts cardiovascular disease and the health/tech advisory committee for mHealth Israel. He is immediate past chair of the American Heart Association Northeast Founder’s Affiliate.

Gil is also an advisory board member of the Prix Galien Foundation, referred to as the Nobel Prize for health innovation. Gil is a past national board member of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and American Academy of Pain Medicine Foundation. Always ready to share knowledge, Gil is a columnist for PM360 magazine, speaker on patient advocacy and health communications and co-editor of the book Branding Health Services: Defining Yourself in the Marketplace.