Abstract / Description: 

As COVID-19 devastated disenfranchised communities in the San Joaquin Valley (see map), grass-roots organizations joined with local researchers to provide help. They’ve organized testing drives and educated communities about the disease and vaccines. But much of their work falls outside medical care, such as advocating for labour rights and subsidies for housing.

These types of social and economic intervention are what’s really needed to address health disparities, but many academics and health officials are reluctant to push for such measures publicly, says Mary Bassett, an epidemiologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is a former commissioner of New York City’s Department of Health. That reticence needs to change, she says. “We need to be more outspoken about things that aren’t in our lane.”

Bassett is one of a growing number of researchers who are getting political, and who hope that COVID-19 will be a catalyst for change in the field. “The pandemic has turned up the dial, and to me it brings out a sense of urgency,” says Arrianna Marie Planey, a medical geographer at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Not content with simply identifying the social determinants of health, she says public-health researchers should be doing more to address them.

Collection: 
eCardio Hub Collection
Category: 
COVID-19 Impact on Minority Health
Date: 
2021
Author: 
Amy Maxmen