Via Unsplash
The sad truth: Black people are more likely to have kidney failure, requiring a life-saving transplant.
Black neighborhoods are more likely to have unhealthy food access, worse health care, and more alcoholism and poverty - all of which can be risk factors for kidney failure.
Black patients are HALF as likely to get a kidney as whites! States with higher white populations have more registered organ donors, so patients are more likely to get a transplant.
Even more, Black people tend to live in states with worse health care systems, more poverty, and unequal levels of awareness of organ donation.
The racial disparity in kidney donations has gotten WORSE since the 90s, according to research from Johns Hopkins University.
A new law will make it so that available kidneys can be given to the sickest patient, regardless of which state they live in.
But critics say it’s not fair for a struggling state like Missouri to have to share kidneys with New York or California. Unfortunately, there’s no easy or right answer.
It seems like ending the CAUSES of kidney failure among Black people, and increasing the numbers of organ donors, would probably do more to solve the problem than changing the rules about how kidneys are distributed.