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Director of @OpenSociety's Public Health Program @JonCohenNYC, lays out the top 10 things the new Biden COVID Task Force can place at the center of its work to ensure a just, transformative, and effective response. THREAD
STRUCTURAL RACISM, is the public health crisis at the root of COVID-19. We need to declare racism a national public health crisis, link task force to all federal initiatives on racial equity, and acknowledge, address racism in COVID-19 risk, vulnerability, impact and response. 1/
PRISONS, and other places of mandatory detention—we need structural solutions for de-crowding, humanitarian release, due process, to get at the root. 2/
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, is increasing under conditions of lockdown and sheltering in place. We need legal protection, pathways to safely connect with services, access to Internet, and screening. 3/
MENTAL HEALTH, is a factor in increasing both COVID vulnerability and impact. We need to address lived experience of isolation and economic distress as normal, and avoid over-medicalizing the response. 4/
OVERDOSE, is on the rise— the epidemic within the pandemic. We need harm reduction services like safe access to naloxone, substitution treatment, ending punitive responses to addiction. 5/
AFFORDABLE ACCESS, to vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics, health care. We need to get beyond a charity approach and control prices as a matter of justice and return on taxpayer-funded investment. 6/
MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES, who have the most to lose from failed responses. We need to ensure access to services for the undocumented, mobilize migrant workers and health workers, de-crowd immigrant detentions, negotiate political solutions to refugee crises that uphold rights. 7/
GLOBAL SOLIDARITY, beyond paying our dues to WHO— learn from other countries including success in Africa, share health technologies instead of stockpiling, prioritize strengthening health systems rather than securing borders, address the humanitarian crisis in Latin America. 8/
COMMUNITIES, the key to the response, the ones who know where the pain and the solutions are, need to determine place-by-place who is hurting the most, establish mechanisms for community engagement, accountability, and oversight of every aspect of the pandemic response. 9/
HUMAN RIGHTS, in public health countermeasures need to safeguard privacy in testing and contact tracing, ensure social distancing requirements meet health needs, give support to enable people to comply, pressure governments violating rights in the name of pandemic control.10/END
