Open AccessAmerican Indians and Alaska Natives in the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Grave Burden We Stand to Bear
Author(s) -
Erik Brodt,
Allison Empey
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
health equity
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.826
H-Index - 9
ISSN - 2473-1242
DOI - 10.1089/heq.2021.0011
Subject(s) - covid-19 , pandemic , government (linguistics) , witness , economic growth , work (physics) , political science , native american , geography , history , public administration , ethnology , medicine , disease , law , virology , engineering , economics , infectious disease (medical specialty) , mechanical engineering , linguistics , philosophy , pathology , outbreak
The United States is bearing witness as a crisis-within-a-crisis unfolds across Indian Country, where a persistently underfunded system with inadequate resources and outdated facilities set the stage for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to overwhelm Tribes. Now is the time to reimagine our way forward as a country beyond the pandemic. To address these issues, we recommend that (1) the federal government appropriately fund the Indian Health Service and work more closely with tribal governments, and (2) programs that recruit, train, and retain American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) health professionals be expanded. We offer guidance on decisive and impactful steps that can be taken, together, today.