内容摘要：An undrafted free agent from Georgia, Andrews started 121 of 124 regular-season games he played in and also played in 12 playoff games. He also played in three Super Bowls, winning two, and was the last remaining offensive starter from the Patriots’ 2018 championship team.

An undrafted free agent from Georgia, Andrews started 121 of 124 regular-season games he played in and also played in 12 playoff games. He also played in three Super Bowls, winning two, and was the last remaining offensive starter from the Patriots’ 2018 championship team.

But experts, officials and advocates all agreed on one thing: The declarations were an important first step toward creating a racially equitable society. Extensive research shows racism can have detrimental health impacts on people of color, including chronic stress and anxiety and higher rates of heart disease and asthma.AP correspondent Kenya Hunter reports on how communities responded to racism being declared a public health issue.

“If we’re not going to name racism in the first place, then we’re not going to start to develop solutions to address it,” said Dara Mendez, who teaches epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh and studied the early declarations. “... Then the next step is (asking) what are the actions behind it? ... Are there resources? Is there community action?”Lilliann Paine wanted to see everyday public health work focus on the intersection of racism and public health, and in 2018 brought the idea to the Wisconsin Public Health Association. Milwaukee, where Black people are thebecame one of the first cities in the country to adopt a declaration in 2019.

“If racism as a public health crisis was truly operationalized, we would have more people graduating from high school. If it was truly operationalized, people could live to their full potential and not worry about being mistaken by a police officer for having a gun,” said Paine, who was the chief of staff at the city’s health department from late 2019 to March 2021. “And those aren’t changes you can speak to overnight.”Wisconsin’s biggest city now has a

, released in December, that wants to address racism as a public health crisis in various ways — from increasing voter registration to improving infant mortality rates, which are three times higher among Black infants than white infants.

The plan also highlights the need to improve housing conditions, and one of the health department’s key priorities is addressing lead poisoning in older homes. Black children in Milwaukee are up to 2.7 times more likely to have elevated blood lead levels compared to other races, according to the community health improvement plan.“The patients pushed us to go ahead,” agreed Dr. Tatsuo Kawai, a Mass General surgeon who’d been reluctant to even broach the idea – but last March, four months after that meeting, gave a longtime patient the first gene-edited pig kidney.

In Palm Springs, California, Carl McNew emailed NYU to ask about volunteering while he’s still fairly healthy.McNew donated a kidney to his husband in 2015 but later his remaining kidney began declining, something very rare in living donors. Medications and intermittent dialysis are helping but McNew knows he’ll eventually need a transplant.

Carl McNew watches television with his husband Steve Hunter in Palm Springs. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)Carl McNew watches television with his husband Steve Hunter in Palm Springs. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)