Health Inequity Quotes

There are Black women who die while trying to give life to newborns because Black people are always overlooked, under-cared-for, underprivileged. It's been what it has been since the beginning of time. I know from my own experience dealing with the health-care system, having to spend so much money to go to the doctor and still be overlooked.

If extreme poverty is allowed to increase, it will give rise to new problems, including new diseases that will spread from countries that cannot provide adequate healthcare to those that can. Poverty will lead to more migrants seeking to move, whether legally or not, to rich nations.

It's maddening in my travels to watch children dying simply because they were born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Cost containment too often becomes care containment. And it affects the least powerful population sector with the quietest voice.

Nowhere are the divisions of race and ethnicity more sharply drawn than in the health of our people.

In an age of explosive development in the realm of medical technology, it is unnerving to find that the discoveries of Salk, Sabin, and even Pasteur remain irrelevant to much of humanity.

We are lagging far behind comparable countries in overcoming the disadvantages Indigenous people face.

In low-income countries, getting to a health post is hard. It's very expensive.

Who lives long and who dies prematurely, is the defining issue of our time. And I submit to you, there's a significant race dimension, it is basically class-driven.

It's fashionable to speak about vulnerable populations in medicine and public policy, but it's harder to find a more vulnerable population than those who are dying.

The impact of all these restrictions is on poor women, because women who have means, if their state doesn't provide access, another state does. ... It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people.

… if medicine is really to accomplish its great task, it must intervene in political and social life. It must point out the hindrances that impede the normal social functioning of vital processes, and effect their removal

The burden of disease falls on the poor.

We used to say in the black community that if somebody else caught a cold, we caught pneumonia.

I can't sleep. There's always somebody not getting treatment. I can't stand that.

The reality is that life expectancy has not improved for everyone. In fact, in some cases, life expectancy is actually decreasing.

I travel the world visiting global health programs as an ambassador for the global health organization, PSI, and sometimes the disconnect I see is truly striking: people can get cold Coca Cola, but far too infrequently malaria drugs; most own mobile phones, but don't have equal access to pre-natal care.

There are disparities in accessing quality maternity health care in most every country, and most all health systems could and must be improved upon if we want to create healthy families who will thrive.

If you look at the language of illness, you can use it to describe race - you could experience race as an illness. You can experience income level, at many different levels, as a form of illness. You can experience age as an illness. I mean, it's all got an illness component.

The same things that lead to disparities in health in this country on a day-to-day basis led to disparities in the impact of Hurricane Katrina.

Especially some of the poorest in our society need to have the greatest support because health inequalities are too wide.

In the same vein as these events, National Minority Health Month also serves as a reminder of how much work needs to be done to eliminate health and healthcare inequities.

Nigeria has moved into low-middle-income, but their north is very poor, and the health care systems there have broken down.

In India, it's the rich who have problems with obesity. And the poor are darker-skinned because they work outside and often work without their tops on so you can see their ribs.

The idea that because you're born in Haiti you could die having a child. The idea that because you're born in you know Malawi your children may go to bed hungry. We want to take some of the chance out of that.