PAHO: Brazil lists efforts to tackle racism in the Americas

The Brazilian government has delivered to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) proposals and guidelines for tackling racism in the Americas. The list comes as the result of the Regional Meeting: Addressing Ethnic-Racial Inequalities in Health, hosted by Brazil and attended by representatives from 22 countries from the region.

The recommendations are aimed at implementing the Strategy and Action Plan on Ethnicity and Health in Latin America:

– formalizing bodies that promote ethnic-racial equity in a cross-sectional way, like the Office of Ethnic-Racial Equity in Health, created last year by the Brazilian Ministry of Health;

– creating working groups within PAHO to keep participating countries mobilized around these issues. In Brazil, the Interministerial Technical Committee on the Health of Black People has been assigned a similar role, involving three ministries, municipal and state managers, and social movements;

– devising a strategy to fight institutional racism, including racism in health care;

– implementing affirmative action across all selection processes in health care, as was done in the last call for applications under the More Doctors program, which dedicates a number of positions for people with disabilities and ethnic-racial groups such as blacks, quilombolas, and indigenous people;

– releasing calls for proposals for nonprofits with specific funding for ethnic-racial associations;

– conducting ethnic-racial research on health to produce evidence and solutions for the health care network. In Brazil, one such initiative is the publication of bulletins on the health of black people, with data organized according to skin color and ethnicity;

– adapting systems to produce adequate data on various racial and ethnic groups, as recently happened with the SUS Digital app, which included options for self-declaration of gender and skin color;

– expanding health services, taking into account the specific circumstances—including cultural factors—in marginalized urban areas, traditional and rural communities, forest and water resources, indigenous people, and immigrants, among others.