Both have highlighted policies that limit health care access in Georgia, such as its new six-week abortion ban and a decision by Republican Gov.
Georgians have witnessed health services dwindle before and during the pandemic, straining the state’s medical system even as regional health care costs rise.
Nearly half of Georgia’s 159 counties have no OB-GYN, according to the Georgia Board of Health Care Workforce.
Some see the shutdowns as exacerbating racial disparities in health care access in Atlanta, where a 2018 Trulia analysis found 25.3 health care providers per 10,000 residents in the city’s majority-white census tracts, compared with 9.8 in majority-Black tracts.
“I’m looking at somebody that is going to be for the community,” she says, “that’s going to help us with the health care — bring it closer to us.”