CAPC Statement on Racial Injustice
Palliative Care is based on one essential principle: each individual human life has value and meaning. Health care workers in palliative care and other fields work every day to recognize each patient as a person and to support their ability to live fully. We at the Center to Advance Palliative Care are overcome with outrage and mourning in response to the ongoing disregard of this foundational principle.
The tragic murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and of so many people of color before him, make it imperative that all of us in the palliative care field, the health care industry, and our fellow citizens, come together and recognize that all members of our society must be treated as individual fellow human beings, with equal dignity and respect. Police brutality toward people of color cannot be tolerated by a civilized society.
Likewise, we have seen that striking health inequities due to embedded social determinants, especially racism and poverty, have been tragically underscored during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our least advantaged and most underserved communities-- notably Black people, indigenous people and other communities of color—have been ravaged with particular ferocity.
We call upon ourselves and our colleagues to combat racism and inequity within our own communities, and to pressure local and national leaders to dismantle the legal foundations of structural racism.
About the Center to Advance Palliative Care
The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) is a national organization dedicated to increasing the availability of quality health care for people living with a serious illness. As the nation’s leading resource in its field, CAPC provides health care professionals and organizations with the training, tools, and technical assistance necessary to effectively meet this need. CAPC is part of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. https://www.capc.org/
Contact: John Zoccola @ [email protected] or 267.664.2759