Dr. Nancy Krieger, Professor of Social Epidemiology, has been recently featured in The Washington Post’s “How the coronavirus exposed health disparities in communities of color” and in Slate’s “It’s Not Too Late to Save Black Lives”.
In How the coronavirus exposed health disparities…, authors Aaron Williams and Adrian Blanco highlight the disproportionate rates of coronavirus deaths in non-white communities and the noticeable lack of demographic data in some states when the outbreak first began. “It truly makes no sense in anyone’s pandemic planning or any just regular health record that these [demographic] data would not be there,” says Dr. Krieger in the article.
In It’s Not Too Late…, Dr. Krieger advocates for employers to provide “essential” workers the necessary protective equipment and safety training needed to do their job. This would help lower coronavirus exposure. “The thing that can absolutely be mitigated is the risk of exposure,” she says. “It’s going to get trickier once people are exposed. There may be differentials in the mortality because of preexisting health injustices and that’s not going to be as simple. That’s why the primary prevention is key.”
Read the full The Washington Post and Slate articles.
