(Photo by iStock/RyanJLane)
The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the lack of health-care access experienced by underrepresented communities throughout the United States. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Black Americans represent 29 percent of the country’s COVID-19 cases, despite making up only 13 percent of the US population. Black Americans are also three times more likely to be hospitalized and two times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white Americans, according to a National Urban League report and data from Johns Hopkins University.
In Philadelphia—a majority Black city—Black people have had higher rates of infection than other racial groups, totaling 46 percent of known coronavirus cases and 51 percent of related deaths. Researchers have linked their higher rates of death to social factors, including housing and employment, as well as to health factors such as higher rates of diabetes.
As COVID-19 spread and testing in Philadelphia’s Black communities was nonexistent, Ala Stanford, MD, couldn’t wait any longer for the city to act. In April 2020, Stanford, an adult and pediatric surgeon with her own specialty practice, R.E.A.L. Concierge Medicine, created a pop-up testing program in 48 hours. She rented a van and purchased testing supplies with her own money, and then drove to the Deliverance Evangelistic Church in North Philadelphia with a handful of physician and nurse volunteers to offer free COVID-19 testing in the parking lot.
This event marked the inception of the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium (BDCC). An initiative of It Takes Philly, a nonprofit founded by Stanford that offers educational and medical services to inner-city youth, the BDCC addresses COVID-19 health-care disparities by going straight into communities. In Philadelphia, neighborhoods just one mile apart can see average life expectancies that differ by 20 years. So, Stanford began vaccinating by zip code.
Stanford and her volunteers test about 50 people per hour for up to 6 hours, averaging 300 people per day. After the first 30 sessions, the BDCC had administered 6,000 COVID-19 vaccinations. To offset testing costs—approximately $25,000 a day—Stanford established a GoFundMe, which has raised more than $800,000. The following month, the BDCC submitted a $6.9 million bid in response to the city’s request for COVID-19 testing proposals. The city awarded them nearly double that amount—more than $12 million for testing and vaccinations.
“The [BDCC] has filled an instrumental role in advocating for and protecting African American communities in Philadelphia throughout the pandemic,” says Cheryl Bettigole, MD, the acting director of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. “They have tested and vaccinated tens of thousands of Philadelphians, often in the most underserved and underresourced areas of the city. Without their day-by-day work encouraging Black Philadelphians to get vaccinated, many likely would not have gotten vaccinated.”
Stanford and her volunteers—who number in the dozens—intentionally chose Black churches as their service sites because of the significance of the churches to the community. During the 2020 lockdown measures, Stanford and her team set up testing and vaccination sites in church parking lots instead of inside churches. To assist people without access to transportation, Uber awarded the BDCC a $250,000 grant in April 2021 to provide 10,000 free rides to city residents to travel to the sites.
By the end of September 2021, the BDCC had administered more than 250,000 COVID-19 tests and more than 52,000 COVID-19 vaccinations. In October, the BDCC opened a health clinic on-site at the Deliverance Evangelistic Church. Named in honor of Stanford, the Dr. Ala Stanford Center for Health Equity offers a range of medical services, from wellness checkups and immunizations to lab tests and behavioral health care. The clinic employs five physicians, two physician assistants, and a team of nurses. True to the endeavor for health-care equity, the clinic accepts all forms of insurance and offers a sliding scale to those without insurance.
“The Deliverance family and surrounding community are so grateful to Dr. Ala Stanford for allowing her [clinic] to be established in an area that will benefit tremendously from their medical services,” Deliverance’s Pastor Glen Spaulding says. “We appreciate all they have done and continue to do for people from every walk of life.”
Read more stories by Victoria A. Brownworth.