Open AccessIncorporating Health Equity and Community Perspectives During COVID-19: Commonalities with Cardiovascular Health Equity Research
Author(s) -
Erica Payton Foh,
Sandra Echeverría
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
ethnicity and disease
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.767
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1945-0826
pISSN - 1049-510X
DOI - 10.18865/ed.30.3.421
Subject(s) - health equity , equity (law) , covid-19 , social determinants of health , parallels , political science , pandemic , public relations , social justice , call to action , telehealth , economic growth , sociology , health care , criminology , medicine , disease , business , telemedicine , economics , infectious disease (medical specialty) , law , operations management , pathology , marketing
The COVID-19 pandemic is revealing the deeply entrenched structural inequities in health that exist in the United States. We draw parallels between the COVID-19 pandemic and our cardiovascular health equity research focused on physical activity and diabetes to highlight three common needs: 1) access to timely and disaggregated data; 2) how to integrate community-engaged approaches in telehealth; and 3) policy initiatives that explicitly integrate health equity and social justice principles and action. We suggest that a similar sense of urgency regarding COVID-19 should be applied to slow the burgeoning costs and suffering associated with cardiovascular disease overall and in marginalized communities specifically. We remain hopeful that the current crisis can serve as a guide for aligning our principles as a just and democratic society with a health agenda that explicitly recognizes that social inequities in health for some impacts all members of society. Ethn Dis. 2020;30(3):421-424; doi:10.18865/ed.30.3.421