Oprah Winfrey’s Plea to Root Out Racism from Health Care

Because he couldn’t breathe, Gary Fowler, a Black American man, wrote his last words to tell others he was dying. He was 56 years old. 

Fowler died of COVID-19 in early 2020 after spending weeks going from one Detroit emergency room to another to get a COVID test when his symptoms became obvious and unbearable. He even told the medical teams at each ER that he had previously taken his father to the hospital for COVID. But each of them refused to test or treat him. He took his last struggling breaths at home, sitting in a chair near his wife, who woke up to find him dead. “No one tried to help him,” his stepson later said.  

At that point, about 40 percent of COVID-related deaths in that part of Detroit happened to Black Americans.

A powerful voice for equity

Oprah Winfrey heard the story and was driven to look further. She executive produced and released a documentary, The Color of Care, about the inequities that have always existed in our healthcare system. It’s just that COVID exposed them in ways only the most willfully naïve—or prejudiced—among us could deny.  

Gary Fowler was a hard-working man who only wanted to give his family a better life than he’d had. Up until he was infected with COVID, he worked 80 hours a week as a security guard.

For Winfrey, Fowler’s story was personally moving because she could see herself in his situation. She said that if she had nowhere to turn for care and felt her conditioning worsening, she would have also found herself in her favorite chair, at home, writing a last message to record some part of her story. The image of what this man and his family went through “haunted” her, and she knew she had to make the documentary.

In a video introduction to The Color of Care, Winfrey asks her viewers what they would do if they had to go to three different hospitals to beg for help but never received it. She asked them to imagine if their access to care depended on their skin color.

When Winfrey looked at the research documenting how the American healthcare system treats patients of color, she saw the proof that there are “far too many” Gary Fowlers. COVID, she said, has exposed a “larger pandemic” of built-in disparities in the medical establishment that we all depend on for life-saving care.

Campaigning for lasting change

Director Yance Ford made the film under the auspices of Winfrey’s Harpo Productions and the Smithsonian Channel. It’s available for viewing on the Smithsonian Channel and was additionally set up for free viewing on the Smithsonian’s Facebook page and YouTube channel through the end of May 2022. The documentary centers on the people of color who died during the pandemic and records the numerous heartbreaking barriers they ran up against as they tried to get help.

The film is only one component of Winfrey’s campaign for change. The film’s producers are also supporting an effort to reach out to an emerging generation of healthcare professionals and government decision-makers across agencies. They hope to educate all Americans about the grave consequences we face if we continue living in a system built on medical inequities. 

Celebrity doesn’t guarantee equity

For all her success and fame, Winfrey herself has not been immune from race-based inequities in health care. In 2007 she was experiencing heart palpitations, but the initial five physicians she went to failed to diagnose her properly. Each of them prescribed her a different medication. When she finally went to the Cleveland Clinic, that team gave her the blood test that correctly diagnosed her with a thyroid problem. 

When Winfrey later returned to ask one of the earlier doctors why she’d been prescribed medication but not a blood test, the doctor gave an unsatisfactory answer. Winfrey realized that her celebrity came with the plus of being streamlined and prioritized for appointments and access, but it also put her in the position of intimidating doctors so much that they felt they had to throw anything they could offer at her in hopes of avoiding the notoriety that would come if they failed her. 

And she knows that not everyone enjoys the privilege of celebrity. 

 A tower of disparities

Statistics show the disproportionate effects of skin color on COVID cases and mortality rates, with Black, Indigenous, and Latino Americans affected the most. As of March 2021, a full year into the pandemic, COVID death rates for Black Americans stood at 1.4 times the rates for their white counterparts. That means that for every 124 white patients who died of the disease, 178 Black patients did. 

The reasons are complex but rooted in systems of inequality of social class, education, geography, and access to resources. About a quarter of all employed Black and Latino people in the US work in service jobs. About 27 percent of all licensed practical and vocational nursing staff are Black. And, while these employees may have one or another type of health insurance, many are not guaranteed paid sick time if they miss work. Black and Latino employees are also more likely to depend on public transit to get to and from work. 

Additionally, people of color are more likely to live in multi-generational housing and high-population density areas than white people. They are also at higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes and other medical conditions that weaken the immune system and place them at greater risk of severe COVID. 

Black people—particularly Black women—are also statistically more likely to be misdiagnosed. While it doesn’t happen to all, it happens to enough Black women that many recognize the feeling of having their medical concerns brushed aside by doctors. Black women are often not given the full range of diagnostic and treatment options available to them, from routine tests to sophisticated but highly useful genetic testing that could save their lives. 

If it can happen to Oprah Winfrey, it can happen to anyone.