NPR

How A Minneapolis Clinic Is Narrowing Racial Gaps In Health

For five decades, NorthPoint Health & Wellness Center has confronted the ways disparities can hurt its patients' health. Community leaders say it's a model for cities facing similar struggles.
NorthPoint Health & Wellness Center in north Minneapolis started as part of a 14-city pilot program funded by President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty. It's the only one of those health and social services clinics still in business.

North Minneapolis, one of the most racially diverse neighborhoods in Minnesota, was already dealing with high coronavirus infection and death rates when George Floyd was killed by police outside a corner store just 3 miles away.

His death on May 25 sparked deeper conversations all across the U.S. about the ways racial inequality plays out, including when it comes to health. Nationally, Black people are at least twice as likely to die from heart disease, from COVID-19 or in childbirth, compared with white people, and north Minneapolis mirrors those trends. Nearly two-thirds of Latinos in the area who get tested for the coronavirus test positive — that's a rate nearly 10 times higher than the state's rate overall.

"We were not surprised, because we serve a community that has health disparities," says , CEO of , a community health and dental clinic

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