Department of Medicine

“If you look at our number of covid patients compared to other hospitals, our numbers have generally been lower,” said Radhika Acharya, medical director of the cancer center [at Highlands Ranch Hospital and assistant professor of medicine at CU School of Medicine]. “I think it was because we were early adopters so we could keep our patients safe.”

Fernando Holguin, the director of the University of Colorado’s Latino Center for Research and Policy Center, focusing on Latino health disparities, said that during the peak of hospitalizations in March and April, he recalls walking through the UCHealth intensive care unit, when he realized just by looking around that the pandemic was spreading rampantly among the minority community. “It seemed like maybe 80% were brown or Black. Most were Hispanic or had Hispanic last names,” Holguin said. “The disparities were really obvious.”