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I know that the COVID-19 vaccine is on everyone's radar. I'll get to that in a moment, but I want to take the time to highlight some of the significant and/or innovative research I'm seeing from scholars examining inequities in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality -Tiffany post
Early on, we saw health disparities begin to emerge related to COVID-19. These will unfortunately not change in the near-term (i.e., 2021). What I do hope we'll see is a more careful consideration of how these disparities have come to be. 2/
To be frank, it's been troubling to see the rush of clinicians, public health folks and social scientists attribute the higher burden of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality among NH Black, Hispanic, Native American and other POC to genetic factors or cultural dysfunction. 3/
I'm very grateful to @mnt for reaching out to me earlier this year to discuss some of the structural reasons that POC face an unequal burden of disease. 4/ https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/a-no-win-situation-expert-weighs-in-on-covid-19-racial-disparities
I'm very grateful to scholars like @mclemoremr @RheaBoydMD @EdwinLindo and @Lachelle_Dawn for their work. They saw an unacceptable and scientifically indefensible use of race in an article and wrote a @Health_Affairs that I hope will set 5/
a new standard in how we talk about race in population health and other fields in 2021 and beyond. 6/ https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200630.939347/full/?utm_medium=social&utm_sour
I include a recent paper looking at COVID-19 disparities on American Indian reservations by @native4data in all of my presentations because I think it really hits at underlying structural factors such as (lack of) indoor plumbing that we must address. 7/ https://journals.lww.com/jphmp/FullText/2020/07000/American_Indian_Reservations_and_COVID_19_.14.aspx
On that note, I am really hoping to see more population health research looking at Indigenous Data Governance and have been reading a bit on this, particularly as it relates to COVID-19. 8/ https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/42782
Other important recent work from @ErfaniParsa @NishantUppal7 @Caroline_HLee @ranitmd @KatieHale29 looks at COVID-19 in immigrant detention centers 9/ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2772627
One thing that I'm hoping to see more of in 2021 is work on Black immigrants. Black residents only make up 2% of the population, but nearly a quarter of COVID cases. Nearly half of Black residents are immigrants and contact tracing suggests that they 10/. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/18/im-scared/?arc404=true
are disproportionately affected. Black immigrants are historically (and presently) more likely to be deported than those from other racial/ethnic groups as well, suggesting heightened vulnerability. 11/ https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-us-ramping-up-deportations-of-black-asylum-seekers
I also anticipate more work being done in Asian American communities. We all know this, but they are NOT a monolith!!! There is suggestive evidence that Filipino Americans are disproportionately impacted, for example. 12/ https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/24/health/filipino-nurse-deaths/index.html
I also think 2021 will bring more great data viz, which I think is an important and effective tool for conveying COVID-related inequities. This NY Times article does a beautiful job of showing how income inequality impacts ability to social distance. 13/ https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/us/coronavirus-stay-home-rich-poor.html
I almost forgot! This article from @WhitneyEpi and colleagues on how occupational settings drive COVID-19 disparities..more of this please!! 14/ https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/189/11/1244/5866668
I'm also a huge fan of @ruqaiijah and @profmohapatra. Their research on structural discrimination in workplace protections has really helped me to think about how to draw a picture for people on how structural racism works to produce these disparities. 15/ https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3614092
So 2021 and COVID-19? More focus on structural inequality (including racism) and less focus on individual-level behavior. Fin. 16/
