HHS to Spend Almost $800K Assessing ‘Structural Racism’ of Chronic Kidney Disease

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will provide Emory University nearly $800,000 to mitigate the “effects of structural racism on chronic kidney disease.”

The grant runs from September 1, 2023, to June 30, 2028.

Current chronic kidney disease treatment “fails to attend to the role of structural racism,” according to the grant description.

“Our central hypothesis is that with substantial guidance from a community advisory board, comprehensive systems change implemented through an anti-racism lens will improve access to all steps of care along the [chronic kidney disease] continuum among African American patients, thereby decreasing existing racial inequities,” the description adds.

Two agencies within HHS are providing the grant, with $500,000 coming from the National Institute of Nursing Research and $290,955 coming from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease.

The grant comes as several health entities are requiring employees to undergo training for “anti-racism.”

The University of Washington Health in Seattle, Washington requires white employees to undergo diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training to make up for alleged inherent racism present in being white. White employees are to read articles explaining how to be “antiracist, because being ‘not racist’ is not enough,” according to documents shared online.

The Kentucky Board of Nursing also instructed health care workers to “recognize the history of racism in healthcare.”

“In order to lead to meaningful change, any exploration of implicit bias must be situated as part of a much larger conversation on racism and bias,” reads a slide from the training.

Nurses were taught that examples of “covert racism,” including “white silence,” “denying institutional racism,” the phrase “there’s only one human race,” “bootstrap theory,” “Eurocentric school curricula,” “weaponizing whiteness,” “fetishizing POC,” “claiming ‘reverse racism,’” “excusing/ ‘white-splaining’ racism.”