Lost a loved ones from the covid19 pandemic. Fay, with Tropical Storm making its way to the northeast, i hope everyone is staying safe. Ofare facing a crisis unprecedented proportion. The novel corona pandemic has already infected over 3 million and killed over 100,000 americans. The scale of the loss is staggering and efforts to produce a lifesaving axing continues, but not all americans have been impacted equally. Communities of data from the cdc shows africanamericans and hispanic populations are three times more likely to be infected and twice as likely to die from covid19 than white populations. This administrations response to the outbreak has been an utter failure on a multitude of levels. As likely to die from covid19 than white populations. This administrations response to the outbreak has been an utter failure on a multitude of levels. Nowhere is this more acute than its neglect of Minority Health. Since the onset of the outbreak, it has been clear that communities of color are disproportionately impacted. However, the impact on these communities have been obscured by Critical Data gaps. Even with this knowledge, the administration has been painfully slow in setting requirements for collection of racial and ethnic demographic information on covid19 infections. The example is just one of many that demonstrates the administrations lackluster outbreak response, especially when it comes to Minority Health. Even cdc director dr. Robert redfield admitted failure of the administration to collect Data Information issued an apology at made that apology at another congressional hearing last month. I would say dr. Redfield, the American People need more than that. Much of the focus of the administrations response to Minority Health during the pandemic is centered around the department of health and Human Services, the department of Homeland Security, federal Emergency Management agency, fema is playing a vital role as the lead federal agencies of response. Americans are counting on fema to get it right. Unfortunately, fema has had costly missteps in the past when it comes to not factoring in the needs of communities of color and researchers have continuously found that femas Recovery Program exacerbates existing disparities. While these disparities long proceed covid19, the effect they are having on minority communities in a national emergency, i worry about fema not doing enough to meet as we speak, lives are being lost in the country to longstanding Health Inequities and that is unacceptable. At todays hearing, i hope we can explore this problem and hear potential solutions from our panel of experts. The chairman now recognizes the Ranking Member of the subcommittee, the gentleman from new york, mr. King, for an Opening Statement. Chairman. Thank you, i appreciate the opportunity and i think this is a significant and important hearing. I will make my remarks brief. Let me just say new yorkers were hit particularly hard. We had over 400,000 confirmed cases. In my district alone, there is more than 20,000 confirmed cases. There is probably 1200 to 1300 deaths in the district. The particular focus of this hearing as far as how it impacted the minority community, thats particularly true in my district. The average community in the district, excluding the minority communities for the purposes of this debate, is between 15 and 20 cases per thousand. In the minority communities, it goes from 62 to 70 cases per thousand, 3, 4, five times higher in the minority communities. The immediate reason for that seems to be the front line workers, grocery workers, transit workers are minorities. So they are right on the front lines, frontline warriors, and they are getting impacted directly. Some of the longterm reasons are the Underlying Health conditions such as diabetes, and high blood pressure, Heart Disease are illnesses that for a long time go undetected and people may not know they have them and theres a lack of health care in minority communities. That is why i think it is important and i worked with a congressman on this. You have to have them, they are in the community where people in the committee feel safe going to them. They dont feel they are going to check their immigration status, they can just go. Having it nearby makes it more comfortable. These are people who very often have low incomes and may be dont want to be going to doctors. If they dont feel sick, they are not going to go looking for it. Thats why its important to get check ups and be tested and Community Health centers are extremely important. Now, we really began to realize this in early april, the extent of the pandemic in the minority communities. Working with suffolk county, they put a Testing Center on brentwood, two of the most impacted communities, especially brentwood. Also, i have to emphasize that whatever other partisanship is going on, fortunately on long island, congressman greg meeks and i have been working closely on this and ive been working with the state center who rep state senator who is a democrat, we have been trying to work as closely as we can. Sooner or later, we are going to come out of this pandemic. That is only the beginning. We have to realize this can certainly come again and what this has brought out is the underlying conditions as far as lack of Proper Health care in minority committees, so we are going to have to address that as we go forward. As far as the federal response, both of our county executives are democrat, i work with them, i have not heard there has been a lack of funding as far as one community against another. We did fight hard to get ventilators and the gloves, masks, but so far i dont see that being an issue, but i think the underlying, longterm issue is going to be the issue of Proper Health care and we have to take that into account, we have to find ways to rectify that going forward. With that, let me yield back and i look forward to the testimony. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I thank the Ranking Member for his candor and honesty, which is why i appreciate his service to this country so much. Thank you, sir. Thank you once again. I would like to work with you on the Community Health center issue. Thats something that has been very important to me and it is good to hear that youre interested in that and look forward to working with you. Members are reminded that the subcommittee will operate according to the guidelines laid out by the chairman and Ranking Member. With that, i ask consent to waive Committee Rule 882 for the subcommittee under the preceding for the period designated by the speaker under House Resolution 965 without objecting. The chairman now recognizes the chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from mississippi, mr. Thompson, for an Opening Statement. Chairman thompson thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Thank to my colleagues and witnesses. I would like to thank both of you and the Ranking Member for holding todays hearing on Health Disparities and covid19 pandemic. The covid19 pandemic did not create Health Disparities in this country. Instead, the pandemic is further exposing these disparities and their tragic effects on minority and disadvantaged communities. Todays hearing provides an opportunity to examine the federal response to the pandemic and what must be done to confront the disproportionate impacts of the pandemic in these communities. In march, fema was tasked with being the lead federal agency for covid19 response. I have been concerned about femas past Emergency Response efforts, where it failed to adequately address the needs of minority and economically disadvantaged communities. The complexities of a pandemic put this troubling history in starker view. In april 2020, fema published a new civil rights bulletin intended to ensure civil rights during the covid19 response. While the publication is an encouraging step, continued congressional oversight of the agencys efforts and operations is necessary to ensure response efforts to provide equitable assistance to minorities and economically disadvantaged communities. Of course, direction to fema and the entire federal government on Pandemic Response flows from the top. Unfortunately, president trumps response to the worsening pandemic has been a failure by any reasonable measure. Failure to address minority and economic Health Disparities is a significant part of the shortcoming. The administration has even struggled to provide policymakers with covid19 case and morbidity data outcomes by race and ethnicity. In fact, it took pressure from members of congress and the public for the centers for Disease Control and prevention to release its First Nationwide preliminary case and morbidity estimates by race and ethnicity on june 15, 2020, well into the pandemic. Our communities of color and the economically disadvantaged not only have to contend with a deadly virus and failed federal response, but also the systemic inequities that put these communities at greater risk for covid19related hospitalization and death. On april 29, 2020, every democratic member of this committee sent a letter to the department of health and Human Services office of Inspector General requesting they look at this issue and ways the federal government can better address Health Disparities in emergencies. Katrina taught us a lot. I thought we had learned a good bit about communities of color during emergencies but obviously we still have some work to do so i look forward to our witnesses testimony today and i yield back, mr. Chairman. We cant hear you, sir. Chairman payne thank the chairman for his Opening Statement and appreciate his leadership. Chairman payne thank the chairman for his Opening Statement and appreciate his leadership. Now, mr. Rodgers will now be joining us today so i move on to introducing the witnesses. Our first witness, dr. Georges benjamin. Es benjamin. Dr. Benjamins experience includes having been secretary of the Maryland Department of health and Mental Hygiene and the former chief of emergency medicine at the Walter Reed Army medical center. He is also a member of the National Academy of medicine. Welcome. Our second witness is dr. Leana wen. Dr. Wen is a visiting professor of Health Policy and management at the George WashingtonUniversity School of Public Health, where she is also a distinguished fellow at the mullen institute of Health Workforce equity. She also previously served as baltimores health commissioner. Thank you for being here. Our third and final witness is chauncia willis. Ms. Willis is the cofounder and ceo of the institute for diversity and inclusion in Emergency Management. She is a certified emergency manager, a master exercise practitioner and served as the immediate past president of the International Association of Emergency Managers. Welcome. Without objection, the witness full statements will be inserted into the record. I now ask each witness to summarize his or her statement for five minutes beginning with dr. Benjamin. Dr. Benjamin thank you very much for allowing me to spend some time with you this morning. You have my full testimony. Im going to focus on three areas. Some concerns i have about ongoing preparedness activity and the importance of rebuilding our Public Health infrastructure. As you know, this has devastated our nation. Over 3 million cases. Over 130,000 deaths. They are growing at 60,000 cases per day. If you look at the minority community, we have been devastated disproportionately as africanamericans. Over 13 of the population with 24 of deaths. Hospitalizations are five times for African Americans. They are four times for hispanics and nonhispanic whites. The native American Population is also devastated by this outbreak. I think that we ought to think about this epidemic as though we have three of them. Number one, we obviously have this big Infectious Disease epidemic. We also have an infodemic that i will talk about which is a lot of misinformation. Clearly fear plays a predominant role in our community. We do not know what is going on, it is a new disease, there are lots of issues. Quite frankly, we need National Leadership on this outbreak. Obviously, the impact has not just been on health, it has been on the economy and the social welfare, etc. There are three reasons for this. Higher exposure because of public facing jobs for minorities. Susceptibility because of a long history of chronic diseases and social determinants of health. 80 of what makes you healthy occurs outside of the doctors office. People are set up not to be able to have good health and that includes things such as coming to work multiple jobs because of pay inequality because of the lack of paid sick leave and housing, which prohibits you to be able to physically distanced if you get infected. These are all concerns that we have to address if we are going to go forward. Our response has been challenged in many ways. We have had inadequate testing. We have had inadequate data to target resources and responses. Contact tracing is behind where it needs to be. In terms of education, we have not done a great job of educating the public on what is going on and how to address this as we go forward. I remain concerned that should we get hit with something this summer like a severe storm or another hurricane, wildfires, an earthquake, that our ability to manage that will be severely stressed. Imagine being in a shelter where you cant really manage face coverings well, handwashing and physical distancing. We have not planned adequately for that. Finally, we need to fix our Public Health system. I was a Health Officer in maryland during 9 11. We had a good system. But congress and the administration at the time improved our Public Health system. But we as a nation have allowed that to erode away substantially over the last several years. It has impacted our response to covid. It stands to impact our response to natural disasters and i remain concerned that the coordination and leadership is not there for us to address these things as we go forward. With that, i will be kind enough to stop and take questions during the question and answer period. Chairman, i am not sure we heard you. Chairman payne thank you, dr. Benjamin, for your testimony. I now recognize dr. Wen to summarize her testimony. Thank you. Dr. Wen thank you very much. Thank you for addressing the intersection of Racial Disparities and the covid19 pandemic. I come to you from baltimore, where i am a practicing physician and have the honor as serving as health commissioner. Children born today can expect to live 20 years more or less depending on where they are born and the color of their skin. There are Racial Disparities across every metric of health as a result of racism and inequities. Covid19 is a disease that has unmasked these Health Disparities. The evidence is clear that African Americans, latinos, native americans and other minorities bear the brunt of this pandemic. My testimony outlines 10 actions that congress can take now to reduce the impact of the epidemic on people of color. I would like to highlight six of them that are relevant to the work of the Homeland Security committee. First, target testing to minority and underserved communities. Testing must be free, widespread and easily accessible. Yet, it is estimated that we need 10 times the amount of testing that we currently have. Congress must instruct fema to ramp up testing and set up facilities across the country. Existing hotspots should be the priority initially. The key is to have enough testing everywhere to prevent clusters from becoming outbreaks and outbreaks from becoming epidemics. Second, provide free facilities for isolation and quarantine. We know the key to reining in the virus is testing and tracing and isolation when someone tests positive, we tell them to selfisolate. What do you do when you live in multigenerational housing . Other countries have addressed this by setting up field hospitals and converting unused hotels into selfisolation facilities. Congress should request fema to do the same. Third, institute stronger worker protections. Minorities constitute a larger percentage of essential workers. The cdc has issued w