RESUMO
COVID-19 is not the first, nor the last, public health challenge the US political system has faced. Understanding drivers of governmental responses to public health emergencies is important for policy decision-making, planning, health and social outcomes, and advocacy. We use federal political disaster-aid debates to examine political factors related to variations in outcomes for Puerto Rico, Texas, and Florida after the 2017 hurricane season. Despite the comparable need and unprecedented mortality, Puerto Rico received delayed and substantially less aid. We find bipartisan participation in floor debates over aid to Texas and Florida, but primarily Democrat participation for Puerto Rican aid. Yet, deliberation and participation in the debates were strongly influenced by whether a state or district was at risk of natural disasters. Nearly one-third of all states did not participate in any aid debate. States' local disaster risk levels and political parties' attachments to different racial and ethnic groups may help explain Congressional public health disaster response failures. These lessons are of increasing importance in the face of growing collective action problems around the climate crisis and subsequent emergent threats from natural disasters.
RESUMO
If disaster responses vary in their effectiveness across communities, health equity is affected. This paper aims to evaluate and describe variation in the federal disaster responses to 2017 Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, compared with the need and severity of storm damage through a retrospective analysis. Our analysis spans from landfall to 6 months after landfall for each hurricane. To examine differences in disaster responses across the hurricanes, we focus on measures of federal spending, federal resources distributed and direct and indirect storm-mortality counts. Federal spending estimates come from congressional appropriations and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) records. Resource estimates come from FEMA documents and news releases. Mortality counts come from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports, respective vital statistics offices and news articles. Damage estimates came from NOAA reports. In each case, we compare the responses and the severity at critical time points after the storm based on FEMA time logs. Our results show that the federal government responded on a larger scale and much more quickly across measures of federal money and staffing to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in Texas and Florida, compared with Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. The variation in the responses was not commensurate with storm severity and need after landfall in the case of Puerto Rico compared with Texas and Florida. Assuming that disaster responses should be at least commensurate to the degree of storm severity and need of the population, the insufficient response received by Puerto Rico raises concern for growth in health disparities and increases in adverse health outcomes.
RESUMO
In 2006, the committee that developed the National Health Policy for the Black Population (NHPBP) chose sickle cell disease as their "flag to demand health rights." The drafting of this policy was official recognition from the Ministry of Health for racial differences of its citizens in order to address certain inequalities in the form of racial health reparations. Through an ethnographic study which consisted of participant observation, life-story and semi-structured interviews, and surveys in the urban centers of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Salvador, Belo Horizonte, and Brasília between November 2013 and November 2014, I introduce a new conceptual approach called biocultural citizenship. It is a flexible mode of enacting belonging that varies depending on disease status, skin color, social class, recognition of African lineage, and other identifiers. Using empirical evidence, this article explores how people living with sickle cell disease (SCD), civil society, and the Brazilian government-at state and federal levels-have contributed to the discourse on SCD as a "black" disease, despite a prevailing cultural ideology of racial mixture. Specifically, I demonstrate that the SCD movement strategically uses Blackness to make claims for health rights. Biocultural citizenship is dependent on the idea of biological and cultural difference that is coproduced by the State and Afro-Brazilian citizens. The use of biology to help legitimate cultural claims, especially in the Black Atlantic, contributes a new and distinct way to think about how race and skin color are used as tools of agency for diasporic communities.