Racism is a public health crisis and COVID-19 has made it worse, according to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Thursday that the impact of COVID-19 on communities of color was disproportionate to the rest of the population but that the issue is much deeper than the pandemic.

“Yet, the disparities seen over the past year were not a result of COVID-19,” Walensky said in a statement “Instead, the pandemic illuminated inequities that have existed for generations and revealed for all of America a known, but often unaddressed, epidemic impacting public health: racism.”

The CDC is the latest U.S. health agency to declare racism a threat to public health and that communities of color experience adverse life-long effects on their mental and physical health. It reports that people of color “experience higher rates of illness and death across a wide range of health conditions, including diabetes, hypertension, obesity, asthma and heart disease when compared to their white counterparts.”

The agency will continue to study the impact that racism has on health, use COVID-19 funding to invest in disproportionately impacted communities, and launch a web portal tackling the issue as part of its “ongoing commitment to serve as a catalyst for public and scientific discourse around racism and health and to be accountable for our progress.