Black Americans Have Suffered Over 1.6 Million Excess Deaths Compared to Whites in the Last Two Decades

Heart disease and cancer rates were major contributing factors to the excess deaths.
Infants and middle-aged adults had the largest excess years of potential lives lost.
Progress made to eliminate disparities in death rates has not been successful.
The failure to achieve health equity in 2018 cost the nation $1.03 trillion, with most of the economic burden experienced by people of color attributed to premature deaths.
The coronavirus pandemic caused the gap between Black and White death rates to shrink and even flip, showing that it is past time for the federal government to create sustainable, predictable funding at scale to support the Black community and its institutions.