The Health Divide: Food insecurity skews toward communities of color, free COVID shot program runs out of vaccines

Amid sky-high grocery prices, Black and Latino people disproportionately suffer food insecurity, reports Jennifer Porter Gore at Word in Black.  

A decades-long history of disinvestment in Black neighborhoods and supermarket redlining, wherein large grocers don’t open or keep stores in low-income communities, means Black communities have less access to fresh food and pay higher prices, Gore writes. 

America’s 44 million food-insecure people includes about one in five Black and Latino individuals, according to the nonprofit Feeding America. The problem is rooted in poverty, discrimination and food deserts, as well as immigration and language barriers for Latino communities. 

Native Americans also face challenges because of poverty and food deserts. And rural residents often face hunger due to poverty, discrimination and lack of transportation to food markets.  

The health consequences are serious: those living in food deserts are forced to shop in convenience stores and bodegas stocked with processed foods and unhealthy snacks, which in turn contribute to illnesses such as obesity and diabetes.  

Efforts to improve the situation are underway, Gore reports. The White House is investing almost $1.7 billion in an initiative to combat hunger, diet-linked diseases and health disparities.  

The Federal Trade Commission is also investigating high food costs at large grocery chains.  

Direct financial support can help, according to recent research. The pandemic-era Expanded Child Tax credit reduced food insecurity, but hunger jumped again when it ended, according to a study in JAMA Internal Medicine.  

Emergency allotments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) during the pandemic also reduced food hardship during the pandemic, researchers report in JAMA Network Open.  

But they observed the changes only among Hispanic and white households, not Black families.  

That may be due to the lack of healthy shopping options in Black communities, the authors suggested.  

The study authors also speculated that a greater number of  Black families were already receiving maximum SNAP benefits, so may not have received as much of a boost as white households. 

Some states raise benefits amid Medicaid unwinding 

The post-pandemic disenrollment of more than 24 million Medicaid recipients may be offset in part by state efforts to make more people eligible, reports Phil Galewitz at KFF Health News. 

For example, 39 states and the District of Columbia have raised the income threshold for Medicaid to 138% of the federal poverty level. 

A new federal law ensures children will get at least one year of Medicaid once they sign up, and some states have expanded eligibility for enrolled children until they turn 6. 

Several states also made it easier for pregnant women to qualify. 

Medicaid “unwinding” refers to the loss of pandemic-era protections that kept states from kicking people off Medicaid for failing to qualify or renew their coverage. States started culling their rolls last year, leading many people to lose coverage for procedural reasons, such as incomplete paperwork or not receiving a renewal notice.  

“These expansions will mitigate the effects of the unwinding to some degree, though it’s still unclear how much,” writes Galewitz.  

The picture should sharpen once all states complete disenrollment and the Census Bureau releases its latest data next year. 

However, Galewitz notes, the results of November’s election could impact insurance enrollment. For example, federal subsidies for low-income people enrolling in Affordable Care Act plans are set to expire in 2025, and Republicans don’t want to renew them. 

“We are bracing for that potential impact,” said Erin Delaney, director of health care policy at the Progressive Policy Institute. 

Free COVID shot program runs out of vaccines 

Amidst a summer surge of COVID and with the winter respiratory illness season on the horizon, a federal program that provided COVID vaccines to uninsured and underinsured individuals is drawing to a close, report Dani Blum and Katie Mogg at The New York Times. 

The Bridge Access Program from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided about 1.5 million shots, and was supposed to last through December. 

But the funding has run dry. Many clinics are now down to their last few doses, which means patients without insurance coverage will have to pay for the shots, which cost more than $100 at full price. 

Even reduced prices could be prohibitive for some patients, said Dr. John Waits, chief executive of Cahaba Medical Care Foundation in Alabama. 

With the arrival of fall’s new vaccine formulas imminent, clinics are looking for alternative sources of shots from public health departments or seeking donations to cover the costs.  

“We don’t have a good alternative at this point, except to try to find some money to figure out how to buy some vaccines ourselves,” said Dr. Michael Stacey, chief medical officer of LifeLong Medical Care in California. 

From the Center for Health Journalism 

• Aug. 27 Webinar, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. PDT. “Would Project 2025 herald the end of health policy as we know it?” We’ll seek fresh insight on how the Trump-led conservative movement seeks to refashion health policy and what this could mean for Americans, and we’ll explore story angles for both local and national reporting. Our panel will feature Drew Altman, president and chief executive officer of KFF; Victoria Knight, health care reporter for Axios; and Sarah Owermohle, Washington correspondent for STAT. Sign-up here!

What we’re reading

• “Weight-loss drugs are a hot commodity. But not in low-income neighborhoods,” by Ariana Eunjung Cha, The Washington Post 
• “Psychiatrists often unavailable to those on Medicaid,” by Shaun Heasley, Disability Scoop 
• “Rural communities of color across the US find new ways to get the health care they need,” by Kenya Hunter, AP News 
• “Cautious optimism in San Francisco as new cases of HIV in Latinos decrease,” by Vanessa G. Sánchez, KFF Health News 
• “Punjabi Californians find a lifeline through community health workers,” by Claudia Boyd-Barrett, Yes! 
• “Europe offers clues for solving America’s maternal mortality crisis,” by Laura Ungar, AP News 
• “Opinion: Doing more cancer screening won’t reduce Black-white health disparities,” by Adewole Adamson, Visha Patel and H. Gilbert Welch, STAT 
• “Disparities in health and health care: 5 key questions and answers,” by Nambi Ndugga, Drishti Pillai and Samantha Artiga, KFF