KCUR | By Bek Shackelford-Nwanganga
Published March 7, 2025 at 3:00 AM CST
Black Kansans die at higher rates of seven of nine leading causes of death than all other Kansans. Advocates say now is an important time to focus on these disparities.
Black Kansans are dying from most major diseases at higher rates than Kansans of all other races.
A recent study by the Urban Institute shows that racial disparities continue to exist in health outcomes among Kansas residents.
Researchers say the results aren’t surprising, but they offer a glimpse into health data that has long been ignored.
It also provides a roadmap for policymakers and advocates to address health disparities.
But they say the current political environment and President Donald Trump’s focus to disrupt programs about racial inequities complicates these efforts.
Advocates weigh in
Carla Gibson is vice president of programs for the REACH Healthcare Foundation, a nonprofit group that provides funding to organizations in Allen, Johnson and Wyandotte counties and three Missouri counties to help improve health outcomes and equity.
REACH funded the study. Gibson said she hopes the data will help local stakeholders decide what issues to focus on.
“You want to be data-informed; you just don’t want to willy nilly … put money out in the community and not understand the community,” she said.
Gibson said the study started as an idea at the Kansas Black Leadership Council. She said the group realized there was not a comprehensive report on the health of Black Kansans and brought the issue to REACH.
“This type of data didn’t really exist. Nobody has really done this,” Gibson said.
Mark McCormick, executive director for the Kansas Black Leadership Council, said studies like this will help bring issues to the table.
“What I really think is important is that Black health is even being studied,” he said. “I’m a believer in the idea that what gets measured gets done.”
What the report shows
Researchers examined the 10 leading causes of death. They compared the numbers for Black Kansans, Kansans of all races and people of all races on a national level. They focused on four Kansas counties with more than 10,000 Black residents each – Wyandotte, Johnson, Shawnee and Sedgwick counties.
There was not sufficient data separated by race for COVID-19, one of the 10 leading causes of death. But Black Kansans died at rates higher than all other Kansans of seven of the remaining top causes of death. That includes heart disease, kidney issues and diabetes.
Gibson said she wasn’t shocked by the report’s findings. Still, she said it is important to have data to back up what organizations like REACH are working on.
“It doesn’t paint a great picture of the health care of Black Kansans,” Gibson said.
McCormick said the disproportionate death rates in the Black community are tied to racism.
“Whether we want to admit this or not, our founding fathers and others used race as an organizing principle,” he said. “We’ve really done little to disassemble those systems.”
McCormick, who grew up in a predominately Black community in Wichita, said he saw firsthand how discriminatory policies and actions wore on his community.
He said the stressors due to racism Black people face cause them to produce cortisol, a “fight or flight” hormone.
“Long exposure to that causes all these other kinds of cascading issues,” McCormick said.
McCormick said he grew up near a neighborhood where a train derailment decades ago leaked toxic chemicals into a long plume of groundwater. A 2023 study by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment found that people who lived near the spill, especially Black people, experienced significantly high rates of liver cancer. Two years after the study was released, the state said the physical area it analyzed was much larger than the groundwater plume, so it is unclear whether the higher liver cancer rates were directly related to the spill.
Still, McCormick said it could be an example of environmental racism. He said Black people historically settled in areas where land was cheap.
“And the land was probably cheap because maybe there was a railroad going through it, or there were lots of factories there,” he said. “There were things in the air and in the ground that could cause people a great deal of harm.”
McCormick said his community didn’t know the groundwater had been contaminated until nearly 30 years after the spill. He said other things like segregation and access to health care have impacted the health of Black Kansans.
Research examining the health of Black people, and talking about the findings, is especially important right now, McCormick said.
What the study authors say
Kristen Brown, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, and Faith Mitchell, an institute fellow, were two of four authors of the study.
Mitchell said the Trump administration is attacking the collection of data related to race and attempting to close or halt federal funding for organizations that address minority health issues. She said that could complicate research efforts in the future.
“It’s going to be harder and harder to get the numbers that we need,” she said. “That does mean that the efforts of advocates are even more important, to collect local numbers where they can.”
In recent months, several federal agencies have scrubbed data from their websites relating to LGBTQ+ and minority health.
“I hope the administration doesn’t think that if you eliminate the numbers, the problem goes away, because that is, of course, not the case,” Mitchell said.
The researchers said there was a lot they couldn’t find out about the health of Black Kansans. The report said for 47 of Kansas’ 105 counties, there was no data on the top 10 causes of death for Black people.
Brown said there likely was no data in those counties because the Black population is small.
Mitchell said the counties in Kansas with the most data on Black populations were urban.
“We don’t know how very rural Black populations might be doing and whether they might have health experiences that differ from, say, people who live in bigger cities,” Mitchell said.
She said there are also holes in data on African immigrants’ health and Black people’s disability status in the state.
Mitchell and Brown said the study shows that there needs to be more research on the health of Black Kansans and more data collection separated by race in communities with small Black populations.
“Regardless of what happens in Washington, there’s definitely a role for local advocates to advocate for better data collection within the state,” Mitchell said. “That’s going to be really important going forward.”
Brown said to improve the health of Black Kansans, people across racial, generational and economic backgrounds need to unite to make Kansas a place where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
She said Black people are not at fault for the health disparities in the state — it’s a structural issue. That’s why the report should matter to everyone in the state, she said.
“This report is obviously about Black Kansans, but the weight shouldn’t just be on Black Kansans,” Brown said. “It’s more of a canary in the coal mine of an environment that’s not working for everybody.”
Bek Shackelford-Nwanganga reports on health care disparities and access for the Kansas News Service. You can email her at [email protected].
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.
