Over and over, the pandemic has reinforced the reality of racial disparities in the U.S. health system. But that story remains difficult to see in the data, which is still inconsistently collected and reported across the country.
From the East Coast to the West, health officials are taking the Covid-19 vaccines on the road.
Across the country, nurses, technicians, emergency medical workers and community partners are rolling up to the doorsteps, streets and churches of people who are homeless, who live in areas without reliable transportation or who have no internet access.
DETROIT — Tanika Knighton knows how devastating Covid-19 can be: Her 62-year-old father died of the disease last spring, and she and her husband both got very sick last year.
Volunteers at Hindu temples, Muslim groups and Sikh relief organizations across the United States are mobilizing to support India as the world’s second most populous country struggles to handle a devastating surge of the coronavirus.
In the Summer of 2019, researchers at the FAU Center for Environmental Studies (CES) collaborated with Jan Booher of Heron Bridge Education, LLC on a resilience mapping initiative in Broward County, Florida. The goal of this collaboration was to bring to light the many complex factors and processes at play within communities, and within the Estates of Fort Lauderdale community specifically, that work to contribute to community resilience to environmental hazards including flooding, extreme wind and extreme heat.
Reputable census-based vulnerability and resilience assessments such as the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVi) and the Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC) offered an important conceptual foundation for this study. Utilizing the BRIC indicators and framework as a point of departure, this study serves to examine the roles that locally tailored BRIC indicators and dimension types play in shaping resilience within Broward County communities.
To bolster research to help communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19, the National Institutes of Health is funding $29 million in additional grants for the NIH Community Engagement Alliance (CEAL) Against COVID-19 Disparities. This funding was supported by the American Rescue Plan. The awards will provide $15 million to 11 teams already conducting research and outreach to help strengthen COVID-19 vaccine confidence and access, as well as testing and treatment, in communities of color. An additional $14 million will fund 10 new research teams to extend the reach of COVID-19 community-engaged research and outreach.
“The goal of this effort is to foster community-engagement research in communities which have been hit hardest by the pandemic,” said Gary H. Gibbons, M.D., director, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). “The alliance is designed to meet people where they are with the help of trusted messengers, including family doctors, pastors, and community health workers, and to forge lasting partnerships to address health disparities.”