State Plates
The North Carolina Health Plate
In North Carolina, health plates turn on coverage and prevalence — who is insured, and what conditions a population carries. This plate places Black North Carolina in the national health geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black Americans, and North Carolina's distribution figures — 2.5 million Black residents, 22 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
The coverage figures take their local form in North Carolina, where the state rows below set the population behind the national pattern. 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. The benchmark's work is location, not rank: it fixes where North Carolina stands so the plate can be read.
The coverage figures take their local form in North Carolina, where the state rows below set the population behind the national pattern. 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. Not to rank North Carolina but to locate it — that, in an atlas, is the use of a benchmark.
In North Carolina, 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. North Carolina's rows, read against the national midpoint, state the standing of its households.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for North Carolina; the benchmark rows are the published national health record, labeled as benchmarks. In North Carolina, 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 North Carolina, the national health figures are the frame; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the picture inside it. North Carolina's institutional distinction is higher education: the state holds about a dozen historically Black colleges and universities, among the most of any state. The plate sets the national ladder beside North Carolina's attainment and invites the two-sided reading.
In North Carolina, that national coverage pattern runs through the state's own insurance market and care system, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Read for North Carolina, north Carolina's profile is the series' argument for reading growth and rootedness together. For North Carolina, general material earns its place in an atlas only when it sharpens the local record, which the table below states.
In North Carolina, 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 North Carolina that population numbers 2.5 million. In North Carolina, prevalence measures, from hypertension to diabetes, sit downstream of coverage, which is why this plate leads with the insurance record.
This plate takes up its subject directly: The North Carolina Health Plate. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 22%; Black share, alone or in combination: 23.7%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 2.5 Million. In North Carolina, the figures are the argument; the text only keeps them in order.
What follows is the plate the atlas files as The North Carolina Health Plate. How this plate is read, for North Carolina: begin with the map, whose shading bands the published Black share into the legend's five classes, then turn to the table, which states the measures in figures — Black share of the state population (alone): 22%; Black share, alone or in combination: 23.7%. In North Carolina, that is the whole of the plate's claim, and it is enough for a reference.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 22% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 23.7% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 2.5 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.