State Plates
The Vermont Health Plate
In Vermont, health plates turn on coverage and prevalence — who is insured, and what conditions a population carries. This plate places Black Vermont in the national health geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black Americans, and Vermont's distribution figures — 15,000 Black residents, 1 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 Vermont, 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. An atlas benchmark earns its place by locating Vermont, never by ranking it.
In Vermont, that national coverage pattern runs through the state's own insurance market and care system, and the table below fixes the population it describes. 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. In Vermont, held against the national pattern, the state's own rows say how its coverage stands.
For Vermont, the national health figures are the frame; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the picture inside it. 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 comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national midpoint on one side, Vermont's households on the other.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Vermont; the benchmark rows are the published national health record, labeled as benchmarks. In Vermont, 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 Vermont, the national health figures are the frame; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the picture inside it. Vermont holds about 15,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in forty of its people, with Black alone at about 9,500, or 1.5 percent. It is one of the smallest Black populations in this reference, and it contains one of the largest historical facts in the education data: the first bachelor's degree earned by a Black American was awarded in Vermont, in 1823. The plate sets the national ladder beside Vermont's attainment and invites the two-sided reading.
In Vermont, that national coverage pattern runs through the state's own insurance market and care system, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Alexander Twilight — Middlebury College class of 1823, schoolmaster, minister, and the first Black American to serve in a state legislature (Vermont's, from 1836) — built the Old Stone House in Brownington that now anchors the state's Black heritage trail. Vermont's constitutional abolition of adult slavery (1777, the first of the American states) framed the free community's entire history — a fact the state's Black heritage institutions document, alongside the complications (child indenture persisted; the Underground Railroad ran through the farm country) the honest record includes. Vermont's rows, read against the national ladder, state where its attainment stands.
In Vermont, 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 Vermont that population numbers 15,000. In Vermont, prevalence measures, from hypertension to diabetes, sit downstream of coverage, which is why this plate leads with the insurance record.
Filed in this series as The Vermont Health Plate, the plate below states the published record for its subject and reads it closely. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 1%; Black share, alone or in combination: 2.4%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 15,000. The plate reports what the sources publish for Vermont and leaves alone what they do not.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 1% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 2.4% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 15,000 |
| 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.