CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Purple flags, representing the nearly 300 Mecklenburg County residents who died of opioid overdose in 2023, fluttered in the humid breeze last August in recognition of International Overdose Awareness Day on the city’s predominantly Black west side. As recently as five years ago, the event might have attracted an overwhelmingly white crowd. […]
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Posted inHealth, Health Equity
America’s Opioid Epidemic Is Devastating Black Communities
The first victims of the country’s opioid epidemic were predominantly white, living in rural communities devastated by prescription painkiller addiction. With doctors less likely to prescribe adequate pain medication to Black patients, racism protected Black Americans from the first wave of opioid deaths. Now, the face of the epidemic has changed. New federal data points […]