State Plates
The Maryland Health Plate
In Maryland, health plates turn on coverage and prevalence — who is insured, and what conditions a population carries. This plate places Black Maryland in the national health geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black Americans, and Maryland's distribution figures — 2 million Black residents, 31 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
For Maryland, the national health figures are the frame; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the picture inside it. About one in ten Black Americans — roughly 9 to 10 percent in the Census Bureau's annual coverage report — has no health insurance at all, a rate above the national figure and above the White rate. In Maryland, the comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national coverage pattern on one side, the state's system on the other.
For Maryland, the national health figures are the frame; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the picture inside it. Rates in this article are for the full population unless stated; nonelderly rates run higher than the all-ages figures because Medicare covers nearly everyone past 65 — one reason the Black uninsured problem is concentrated among working-age adults, as the age breakdown below shows. For Maryland, the comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national coverage pattern on one side, the state's system on the other.
In Maryland, that national coverage pattern runs through the state's own insurance market and care system, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Employer-sponsored insurance is the largest single source, covering about half of Black Americans, through their own jobs or a family member's — a share below the White figure, reflecting the employment and occupational data of this reference: fewer Black workers in the large-firm, high-benefit sectors, more in service, temporary, and small-employer jobs where offers of coverage are thinner. The midpoint is the reference; Maryland's own rows give the standing of its households.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Maryland; the benchmark rows are the published national health record, labeled as benchmarks. In Maryland, health measures are survey-based, so the plate carries the survey sources on its face and treats the national pattern as the frame inside which state health agencies publish their own state-level readings.
The Population Behind the Plate
For Maryland, the national health figures are the frame; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the picture inside it. Maryland holds about 2 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — nearly one in three of its people, with Black alone at about 1.82 million, or 29.5 percent. The general material becomes a specific place in the table below, in Maryland's rows.
For Maryland, the national health figures are the frame; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the picture inside it. Prince George's County, adjoining Washington on its east, holds roughly 580,000 Black residents — about 64 percent of its 967,000 people — the largest majority-Black county population in the nation. On one side the national midpoint, on the other the households of Maryland — that is the comparison this plate invites.
In Maryland, coverage is the gateway measure: it decides whether the rest of the health system is reachable at ordinary cost. The national Black coverage record, carried here as the benchmark, is the product of federal and state policy layered over the population this atlas counts — and in Maryland that population numbers 2 million. In Maryland, prevalence measures, from hypertension to diabetes, sit downstream of coverage, which is why this plate leads with the insurance record.
For The Maryland Health Plate, the method is the atlas's own: named sources, published figures, and a table that carries what the map cannot. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 31%; Black share, alone or in combination: 32%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 2 Million. In Maryland, what the sources publish, the plate reports; what they do not, it leaves alone.
A closing word on the use of this plate: the figures for Maryland are a reference, meant to be cited, compared, and returned to. In Maryland, a reader who needs the underlying counts will find them in the published tables of the source named below, from which every figure here descends without alteration beyond the rounding the source itself applies.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 31% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 32% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 2 Million |
| United States benchmark — Black Americans without health insurance coverage, approximately | 1 in 10 |
| United States benchmark — Black Americans covered by Medicaid, approximately — and about one in three Black children | 1 in 5 |
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System; U.S. Census Bureau, Health Insurance Coverage in the United States (Current Population Survey). Method: Figures are drawn from the published federal sources named on this page, for the geography named; tile shading bands the published Black population share into the five legend classes. Counts are rounded as published by the source agency, and national benchmark rows are labeled with the basis they are published on.