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Tag: disparities

  • Georgia Legislative Black Caucus pushes civil rights, Medicaid expansion at Capitol

    Georgia Legislative Black Caucus pushes civil rights, Medicaid expansion at Capitol

    Georgia Legislative Black Caucus pushes civil rights, Medicaid expansion at Capitol

    The Georgia Legislative Black Caucus arrived at the Georgia Capitol Monday to advocate for their legislative priorities.

    Coinciding with the start of Black History Month, the organization laid out their priorities in six categories: health, housing, wealth, education, safety/justice and advocacy.

    State Rep. Jasmine Clark, D-Lilburn, said that Georgia needs its own civil rights legislation like Texas, Louisiana and North Carolina and is the lead sponsor in House Bill 670, which would be just that.

    “In a state that produced prominent Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King and John Lewis, Andrew Young and Hosea Williams and so many others, it is actually shameful that the state of Georgia has less protections against discrimination than some of our Southern neighbors,” Clark said. “We as a nation are watching the unraveling of civil rights happen right before our eyes all across the country.”

    Clark said the bill would also require the state to collect data on racial profiling and traffic stops by law enforcement.

    The caucus advocated for bipartisan support on voter accessibility, expanding protections for workers’ rights and increasing the state’s minimum wage.

    Here are the caucus’s top priorities in each category:

    • Full expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act
    • Incentivize affordable housing
    • Create tax incentives, grants and low-interest loans for Black-owned businesses
    • Ensure quality education for Black students in underfunded areas through equitable K-12 funding
    • Focusing on trust-based policing that includes de-escalation, mental health and anti-bias training
    • Improve living conditions and reduce pollution in Black communities

    Read the caucus’s full list of priorities at gablackcaucus.org.

  • Fulton County reparations report estimates billions in harm to Black residents

    Fulton County reparations report estimates billions in harm to Black residents

    Fulton County reparations report estimates billions in harm to Black residents

    A report from a volunteer group estimates that restitution for Black residents in Fulton County could be in the billions.

    The Fulton County Reparations Task Force submitted a 636-page report to commissioners outlining the harms to Black residents perpetrated through slavery and discrimination in Georgia’s most populous county, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

    The report did not record one comprehensive amount for the damage and did not give recommendations for reparations, which is the next stage of the task force’s project.

    “People like to talk about how these harms were done in the past and they’re no longer our responsibility, and we fundamentally disagree with that,” Amanda Meng, a task force member, told county commissioners last month. “A lot of our data in the study show that these inequities are still visible today, and we’re still responsible for them.”

    Here are some key numbers from the report.

    • In 1853, Fulton County received $75,000 from taxes based on the assessed value of enslaved people. That could equal between $2.4 million to $674 million today depending on the compound interest rate.
    • After slavery was abolished, convict labor began in 1876 with Georgia’s first county chain gang in Fulton. The report calculated the total loss for Black convict laborers in Fulton County to be between $4.6 billion and $13.6 billion depending on if their wages were invested over time.
    • Unequal access to the public library system during segregation resulted in the loss of $81 million to $1.7 billion in resources and services.

    The commissioners approved extending the task force another 12-24 months to prepare a Repair Report.

    Other places in Georgia are also looking to conduct research regarding the harm done to Black residents of the state. The Decatur Reparations Task Force plans to prepare a Harm Report as well as Atlanta’s Reparations Study Commission.

  • Judge blocks Georgia’s ban on gender-affirming care for incarcerated people

    Judge blocks Georgia’s ban on gender-affirming care for incarcerated people

    Judge blocks Georgia’s ban on gender-affirming care for incarcerated people

    Gender-affirming care for transgender people incarcerated in Georgia will remain accessible for now.

    U.S. District Judge Victoria M. Calvert struck down the Georgia law last week that bans gender-affirming services, but Attorney General Chris Carr’s office appealed the ruling Monday, according to the Georgia Recorder.

    “The Court does not hold that the Constitution requires all inmates receive hormone therapy if they want it. Rather, the Court requires healthcare decisions for prisoners to be made dispassionately, by physicians, based on individual determinations of medical need, and for reasons beyond the fact that the prisoners are prisoners,” Calvert wrote in the ruling.

    Calvert had previously ordered a temporary block on the law in September. That block will now be permanent.

    Senate Bill 185 passed during the 2025 legislative session and went into effect in May. The law required doctors to gradually decrease hormone therapy for transgender, incarcerated people and to provide them counseling. 

    The bill’s author, state Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, told the Georgia Recorder that they anticipated  the Biden-nominated judge would make this decision.

    “I stand with Attorney General Carr in the belief that, at the end of the day, this will be in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, and it will quickly be upheld, the law will be established as constitutional and right, and we will be moving on to things that are more important in Georgia,” he said.

    Human rights advocates and groups have fought against the bill since it was introduced in the General Assembly.

    Emily Early, associate director of the Southern Regional Office for the Center for Constitutional Rights, spoke at a House hearing in April arguing that the legislation is unconstitutional.

    “These bills directly contravene 8th Amendment U.S. Constitutional protections as well as protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Gender dysphoria is a recognized, medical condition that many transgender people experience,” she said. “If adopted, Senate Bill 185 would impose blanket bans on the provision of gender-affirming care to incarcerated people with gender dysphoria, regardless of needs. These blanket bans have repeatedly been found unconstitutional because they show deliberate indifference to the needs of incarcerated people.”

  • Audit finds Georgia’s rural hospital tax credit brings millions but falls short of growing needs

    Audit finds Georgia’s rural hospital tax credit brings millions but falls short of growing needs

    Audit finds Georgia’s rural hospital tax credit brings millions but falls short of growing needs

    A Georgia tax credit provides millions of dollars to struggling rural hospitals, but it’s not enough to fund growing needs in these communities.

    A recent state audit conducted by the Fiscal Research Center at Georgia State University found that Georgia’s Rural Hospital Tax Credit program has generated more than $432 million for rural hospitals since its inception in 2017. The audit also found that the program costs the state nearly $80 million while adding more than $25 million to the economy.

    Jimmy Lewis, CEO of Hometown Health, told the Georgia Recorder that the cost to the state is minimal compared to the benefit it brings to rural communities.

    “If we don’t provide vehicles like this to preserve economic development in rural Georgia, we’re going to accelerate to a third-world nation beyond anything we can imagine … we’ve got very problematic situations where we don’t have the money,” Lewis said in an interview with The Georgia Recorder. “Again, these hospitals were built in the mid-50s and haven’t been totally upgraded since then, and as a result, we’ve got a real infrastructure problem.”

    A recent study by the Georgia Health Initiative found that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would result in a loss of nearly $626 million of federal funding in rural hospitals. The study also found that 20%, or 91,274 people, of the estimated newly uninsured Georgians will live in rural areas, further increasing the burden on rural hospitals and medical facilities.

    Leah Chan, director of health justice at Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, told the Georgia Recorder that although the tax credit helps struggling hospitals, it does not provide enough financing to meet the needs of rural communities.

    “I think what this audit shows is that it has generated more than $432 million in support for rural hospitals statewide,” Chan said in an interview with the Georgia Recorder. “So that is certainly a benefit. Again, no one solution is going to fix all our problems, and we need to access additional levers that allow us to draw down additional federal funds and to ensure we can cover more eligible Georgians.”

    The Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform published a report in October saying that 21 of Georgia’s 71 rural hospitals were at risk of closure, with 10 of those being at immediate risk.

  • South and Southwest Georgia Experience Highest Infant Mortality Rates, Report Finds

    South and Southwest Georgia Experience Highest Infant Mortality Rates, Report Finds

    South and Southwest Georgia Experience Highest Infant Mortality Rates, Report Finds

    Infant mortality rates vary sharply across Georgia, with the highest death rates concentrated in rural and southern regions, according to the 2025 State of the State Report from the Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Georgia (HMHBGA).

    HMHBGA mapping shows that Georgia’s Southwest (Albany), West Central (Columbus) and South Central (Dublin) public health districts recorded the highest infant mortality rates last year, reaching 10 to 11 deaths per 1,000 live births. In contrast, lower rates — between 5 and 6 — were found in North Georgia (Dalton) and the North district (Gainesville).

    The report also highlights major racial disparities between public health districts. Regions such as Southeast (Waycross), North Central (Macon) and West Central (Columbus) reported Black–white infant mortality gaps ranging from 9 to 16 deaths per 1,000 live births, some of the widest disparities in the state. Meanwhile, districts like Northeast (Athens) and Southwest (Albany) showed smaller gaps of up to four deaths per 1,000.

    These geographic differences mirror patterns in provider access. Georgia Public Broadcasting reports that maternal mortality and infant health outcomes are often worse in communities with fewer obstetric clinicians or where prenatal care is limited. March of Dimes has identified more than a third of U.S. counties as maternity care deserts, where residents lack access to birthing hospitals, OB-GYNs or midwives.

    Advocates say the uneven distribution of healthcare resources leaves families in many parts of Georgia without timely prenatal support. State lawmakers have expanded postpartum Medicaid coverage and invested in maternal home-visiting programs, but experts warn that improving outcomes requires earlier and more consistent access to care.

    HMHBGA said the geographic trends reflect “pronounced disparities in infant health outcomes,” particularly in rural and economically distressed regions of the state. The organization’s findings show that where a family lives remains a major predictor of infant health and survival.