Untreated or overlooked illnesses in a prison population can expose whole communities to the risk of infection from a contagious disease, according to a report from the National Center for Primary Care at the Morehouse School of Medicine.
The report, titled “Prison Health and the Health of the Public: Ties that Bind,” found that of the estimated 2.2 million incarcerated men and women, many suffer from HIV/AIDS, diabetes, hypertension or asthma. Even more suffer from undiagnosed or untreated mental illness.
Many health experts correlate the rise of HIV cases among Black women with the return of HIV-positive men after their release from prison.
“Once released, many former prisoners have no access to health insurance and, thus, no entrée to health services,” says the report.
The report says that in 2005, 8.1 percent of Black men between the ages of 25 and 29 were incarcerated, compared to 2.6 percent of Hispanics and 1.1 percent of Whites. The same data show that women represented 7 percent of all prisoners, an increase from 6.1 percent in 1995. Even so, men were at least 14 times more likely to be incarcerated in state and federal prisons. Racial and ethnic disparities appear to be consistent regardless of gender.
Williams says health care workers and policy makers must together work to expand health care coverage, increase the number of health care providers and address barriers to housing and employment among ex-offenders, among other recommendations.
U.S.-born Latinos, Asians and Caribbean Blacks Have Higher Rates of Mental Illness
