State Plates
The Washington Health Plate
In Washington, health plates turn on coverage and prevalence — who is insured, and what conditions a population carries. This plate places Black Washington in the national health geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black Americans, and Washington's distribution figures — 490,000 Black residents, 4 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
In Washington, that national coverage pattern runs through the state's own insurance market and care system, and the table below fixes the population it describes. 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 Washington, held against the national pattern, the state's own rows say how its coverage stands.
The coverage figures take their local form in Washington, 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 Washington but to locate it — that, in an atlas, is the use of a benchmark.
The coverage figures take their local form in Washington, where the state rows below set the population behind the national pattern. 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. An atlas benchmark earns its place by locating Washington, never by ranking it.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Washington; the benchmark rows are the published national health record, labeled as benchmarks. In Washington, 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
In Washington, that national coverage pattern runs through the state's own insurance market and care system, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Washington holds about 490,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in sixteen of its people, with Black alone at about 295,000, or 3.8 percent. Against the table, the national pattern sharpens into the particular numbers of Washington.
For Washington, the national health figures are the frame; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the picture inside it. Tacoma, the state's third city, is its most heavily Black large city — roughly a ninth of its 220,000 residents — built by the port, the railroads, and above all the military: Joint Base Lewis-McChord, one of the largest installations in the nation, sprawls across the Pierce County plain south of the city, and its service families sustain Black communities through Tacoma's Hilltop and Eastside, Lakewood (a base-adjacent city with one of the state's highest Black shares for its size), Parkland, and Spanaway. Below, the table's rows belong to Washington, and there the general becomes particular.
In Washington, 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 Washington that population numbers 490,000. In Washington, prevalence measures, from hypertension to diabetes, sit downstream of coverage, which is why this plate leads with the insurance record.
The atlas gives this subject its own plate — The Washington Health Plate — because the published record supports one. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 4%; Black share, alone or in combination: 6.4%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 490,000. In Washington, a reader who holds the table and this text together has the plate entire.
A closing word on the use of this plate: the figures for Washington are a reference, meant to be cited, compared, and returned to. In Washington, 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) | 4% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 6.4% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 490,000 |
| 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.