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Recent reports reaffirm huge disparities in the health of blacks compared to other Americans. These disparities persist in part because of the current attempt by health policy makers to frame racially based health differences in non-racial terms. Yet an historical analysis shows that since ancient times, blacks have been the victims of racism in the biomedical sciences; health-system discrimination and deprivation; and later, medical and scientific exploitation. Race- and class-based structuring of the health delivery system has combined with other factors, including physicians' attitudes conditioned by their participation in slavery, and the scientific myth of black biological and intellectual inferiority, to establish a "slave health deficit" that has never been corrected. Until the persistent institutional racism and racial discrimination in health policy, health delivery, and medical educational systems are eradicated, African-Americans will continue to experience poor health outcome.

Context: Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, long-term care researchers have aimed to generate evidence rapidly to inform the pandemic response. It is unclear which areas were prioritised during this period of rapid evidence generation. Objectives: We aimed to map the international scientific evidence on interventions and policy measures to mitigate the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on people who use and provide long-term care. Methods: We conducted a pragmatic, rapid mapping review of international evidence to identify the range of interventions, policies, and measures in long-term care studied during the Covid-19 pandemic and published throughout 2020. Studies were primarily identified from two academic databases (MEDLINE; Web of Science). Findings: We included 137 studies from 22 countries, mostly focusing on the United States, Europe, and Canada. Half of the studies focused on preventing or controlling Covid-19 infections. Other common types of interventions were measures to treat Covid-19 or improve access to general healthcare and studies of possible targets for policies and interventions, such as care home ownership. Only 13 studies covered home-based or community-based care. Limitations: This was a pragmatic review that aimed to map key areas of research in long-term care during the pandemic, rather than a systematic review of all available studies. Implications: During the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, a substantial body of evidence on interventions to mitigate impacts of the pandemic in the long-term care sector emerged. However, reflecting the context and speed with which they were carried out, most studies did not apply an analytical lens and instead provided descriptive findings only. There were very few studies on home-based or communitybased care settings. As countries assess the lessons that can be learnt from the pandemic and improve the preparedness of their long-term care systems for future pandemics and other shocks, it will be important to consider the importance of facilitating rapid generation of more robust evidence.

Over the past 40 years, increasing numbers of Americans have benefited from cancer prevention, early detection, and improved treatment. But a review of site-specific cancer data from 1950 to the present shows that contemporary African-Americans have the highest age-adjusted rates of cancer incidence and mortality of any racial or ethnic group in the United States. Compared to whites, blacks have significantly higher incidence rates for cancers of the lung, prostate, breast (under age 40), colon, pancreas, esophagus, cervix, larynx, stomach, and multiple myeloma. Blacks have significantly higher mortality rates for cancers of the lung, prostate, breast (all ages), colon, pancreas, esophagus, cervix, uterine corpus, larynx, stomach, and multiple myeloma. Moreover, the gap between whites and blacks is widening dramatically. These startling statistics suggest that cancer researchers and policymakers, and the institutions they represent, may not fully appreciate the black cancer experience.

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