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With @gregggonsalves and a growing coalition of labor and community groups, we've been arguing for a Public Health Jobs Corps to fight COVID and build back better. @JoeBiden supports the idea, but details released in his EO today suggest he is heading down the wrong road. /1
Biden's EO suggests that their model is FEMACorps. These are precarious jobs for 18-26 year olds, not the good, long-term jobs we need to build our healthcare workforce. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/21/executive-order-establishing-the-covid-19-pandemic-testing-board-and-ensuring-a-sustainable-public-health-workforce-for-covid-19-and-other-biological-threats/ /2
As @gregggonsalves and I have said, COVID is a chance to truly build back better, to create good, permanent jobs, with a focus on communities hard hit by the pandemic - to stop COVID, and to create a new infrastructure for care. /3 http://bostonreview.net/politics/gregg-gonsalves-amy-kapczynski-new-politics-care
We just can't create the contact-tracing and wraparound care - plus the community health workers, jobs in schools and local health departments - that we need to support people in distancing and vaccination without a MUCH larger corps of people. And permanent jobs. /4
We have some evidence-based estimates, which suggest we need - and can employ IMMEDIATELY - hundreds of thousands of community health workers, and hundreds of thousands in schools, and in local and state health departments -- and that we will fail without them. /5
There's not much time before the next relief bill comes together. More soon from our coalition for the right way to do this -- watch this space. /END
