Staying safe. A crisis of unprecedented proportion the novel corona pandemic already infected 3 million and killed over 100,000 americans. The scale is staggering, efforts to produce a lifesaving vaccine, not all americans have been impacted equally. Communities of color are not only more likely to be infected by the covid19 but more likely to be killed by the virus. In my home state of new jersey africanamericans face up to covid19 fatalities. This trend was observed not only in new jersey, data from the cdc shows that africanamericans, 3 times more likely to be infected and twice as likely to die from covid19 than white populations. The administrations response to the outbreak has been an utter failure on a multitude of levels. Nowhere is this more acute than in 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 has been up secured by critical data. Even with this knowledge the administration has been painfully slow in setting requirements for the collection of racial and ethnic demographic information of covid19 infections. The example is one of many to demonstrate the lack of outbreak response especially when it comes to Minority Health. Cdc director doctor robert redfield, the failures of the administration to collect demographic information on infections and deaths is at another hearing. I would say doctor redfield, the American People need more than that. Much of the focus of Administration 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 playing a vital role as the lead federal agency for response. Americans are counting on fema to get it right. Fema has had a misstep in the past when it comes to not factoring in the needs of communities of color and the researchers have continually found femas Recovery Program exacerbates existing disparities and while these disparities precede covid19, the effect they are having on minority communities in National Emergency in itself, i worry about fema not doing enough to meet lives are being lost in the country to wealth 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 recognizes the Ranking Member of the subcommittee mister king for an Opening Statement. Appreciate the opportunity and this is a significant hearing. I will make my remarks brief. I asked my staff to submit for the record, new york has been hit hard with 300,000 confirmed cases, my district, 120,000 confirmed cases, in particular in this area, that is particularly true in my district. The average community excluding the Minority Community for the purpose of this is between 50, 20 cases per thousand and going through 6270 cases per thousand, that is four or five times higher than minority communities. The immediate reason seems to be the frontline workers, transit workers are minorities. They are on the front lines and they are getting impacted directly in the longterm reasons are the Underlying Health conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure, Heart Disease are a long time going. People might not know they have them. There is a lack of healthcare in minority communities. It is important and i work on this to increase use of Community Health centers, they are in the community where People Living in that community feel safe and secure, dont feel they will check immigration status or anything. Having it nearby makes it more comfortable, going to doctors as they dont feel sick they are not going to know what they are looking for. Its important to get checkups and Community Health centers are extremely important. We need to realize in early april the extent of the pandemic in the minority communities so they put support county, testing center, the most impacted communities especially brentwood. I want to emphasize when partisanship is going on on long island, congressman greg meeks and i work extremely closely on this. The state senator who is a democrat working as closely as we can sooner or later we will come out of this pandemic, this could occur again and as you point out what this is brought out is the underlying conditions, lack of healthcare for people in the Minority Community. As far as federal response to the initial bulk of county executives are democrat, i worked with them on lack of funding, one community against another and ventilators and gloves and so far i dont see that being an issue but the underlying longterm issue is proper healthcare and we have to take that into account and rectify that going forward. Thank you, mister chairman. I think the Ranking Member. For his candor and honesty which is one of the reasons i appreciate his service, thank you. I want to work with you on the Health Center that has been important to me and good to hear that you are interested in that and look forward to working with you on that. Members are reminded the subcommittee will operate according to guidelines laid out by the chairman and Ranking Member in their july 8th, to waive the Committee Rule 8 a to the subcommittee, the remote proceeding under the cover period made by the speaker under House Resolution 965. The chairman recognizes the chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from mississippi for an Opening Statement. Good afternoon to my colleague, i like to thank you in the Ranking Member on Health Disparities on the pandemic. The pandemic did not create the Health Disparities in this country but short of exposing these disparities and their tragic effect on minority and disadvantaged communities, this provides an opportunity to examine the federal response to the pandemic and what must be done for a disproportionate impact of the pandemic in these communities. In march, in the agency for covid19, the response after adequately addressing the needs of minorities for economically disadvantaged communities. The complexity over the pandemic with troubling history, and intended to assure the response. The publication, continued congressional oversight for operations that are necessary to assure response efforts for equitable assistance, direction to fema and the federal government goes from that. Unfortunately Donald 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 struggled to provide policymakers with morbidity data outcomes by race and ethnicity. The fact is 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 on morbidity estimates by race and ethnicity on june 15th, 2020, until the pandemic. Communities of color and economically disadvantaged have to contend with a deadly virus had failed federal response but systematic inequities that push these communities at greater risk of covid19 related hospitalization this and death. On april 20 ninth 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 in ways the federal government can better address disparities in emergency. 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. I look forward to our witnesses testimony today and i yield back, mister chairman. Cant hear you, sir. Thank you, mister chairman for the Opening Statement and appreciate his leadership. Mister rogers will be joining us today. I move on to introducing the witnesses. Our first witness, executive director of the American PublicHealth Association, doctor benjamins experiences include. And the former chief of emergency medicine at the Walter Reed Army medical center. Also a member of Nassau Academy of medicine. Welcome. Doctor lena win is an emergency physician and visiting professor of policy and management at the George WashingtonUniversity School of Public Health. And 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, ms. Willis is the cofounder and ceo of the institute for diversity and Emergency Management. A certified emergency manager, master exercise practitioner, served as immediate past president of the International Association of Emergency Managers region number 4. Welcome. Without objection the witnesses. It will be inserted into the record. I now ask each witness to summarize his or her statement for five minutes beginning with doctor benjamin. Chairman rep pain and Ranking Member kim, thanks for spending time with us this morning. Im going to focus on three areas, disparate impact and cause of it. There are concerns about the preparedness activity and rebuilding the Public Health infrastructure. As you know this has devastating effect, 3 million cases, 130,000 deaths, they are growing, 60,000 cases a day. If you look at the Minority Community we have been devastated disproportionately with 24 of deaths. Hospitalizations, 5 times, nonhispanic whites and four times hispanic to nonhispanic whites and also substantially being devastated by this. We ought to think about this epidemic as well as three of them. We have a big Infectious Disease epidemic. And plays a predominant role in our community. We dont know what is going on, lots of issues. Quite frankly we need to strengthen the National Leadership we have on this outbreak. It is on social welfare etc. There is higher exposure, public facing jobs, minority accessibility because of long steel chronic diseases and social determinants of health. 80 of what makes you healthy occurs outside of Doctors Office so people are fed up not to be able to have their health and that includes such things as having to work multiple jobs because of pay inequalities and lack of paid sick leave, housing which prohibits you from being able to distance even if you get infected in the home. These are all concerns if we are going to go forward. Our response has been challenged in many ways. We had inadequate testing. Iple 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 imagine being in the shelter when you cant really manage coverage very welcome handwashing and physicallan distancing and have plan adequately for that. And finally we need to fix our Public Health system. I was a Health Officer in maryland on 9 11. We had a pretty good Public Health system but you in congress and administration at the time improved our. Public healthhe system. But we as a nation have allowed that to erode away substantially over the last several years. It is impacted our response to covid. It stands to impact our response todi natural disasters and i remain concerned that the coordination and the leadership isnt there for us to address these things as we go forward. With that i would be kind enough to stop and take questions in the questions and answer. Mech. Thank you, mr. Chairman and members of the committee. 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 watereddown guidelines and osha has not met its mission to protect workers. Your committee can ensure that protections are followed for workers like tsa employees. This includes universal masking for all passengers in airports, as this will protect the employees and the public. You can institute stronger protections to limit the spread of covid19 in immigration detention facilities including access to ppe and protocols for isolation and quarantine. Fourth, suspend Immigration Enforcement for those seeking medical assistance for covid19. Public health hinges on public trust. Undocumented immigrants who fear deportation will be scared to seek help if they exhibit symptoms and pose a risk to themselves and their families. Congress should prohibit i. C. E. From accessing records and facilities of those seeking care for covid19. Congress should ask for temporary cessation of the Trump Administrations public charge rule. Fifth, prepare for the next surge. It is a National Shame that we ran out of ppe. There was no excuse in march and less of an excuse now. Ppe should not only be available to doctors and nurses. Cashiers, bus drivers, nursing home attendants and people of color should have protection. Congress must urge them to have a strategy to ensure that ppe, ventilators and other critical supplies are produced in sufficient quantity. Lack of action affects everyone but in particular, minority communities. Finally, support local Public Health. Funding for Public Health preparedness has been cut by half forcing local officials to make impossible tradeoffs between critical programs. I think we can agree that treating covid19 should not come at the expense of preventing cardiovascular disease and reducing overdose deaths. I urge that your Committee Also consider the Public Health safety net to be part of the backbone of Critical Infrastructure and Nation