Daring to Ask: COVID-19 Edition
Karin VanZant
Community developer, systems thinker, looking to bridge gap between safety-net government programs into comprehensive care systems
We are starting to see the reports of how COVID-19 has had a greater impact on minority populations. This is no surprise to me or many who are helpers within the low-income communities in America. In fact, this issue surfaced with Katrina, with Sandy, within our own Dayton community when 15 tornadoes hit last year. When people do not have access to basic needs such as quality food; affordable, safe housing; healthcare; quality schools; predictable transportation; on any normal Tuesday, why would we expect that these groups wouldn’t be disproportionally affected when a major disaster occurs?
In my course at Antioch Midwest on Justice and Equity, my students are exploring contemporary complex social issues and of course we are all using our current context of COVID-19 in which to discuss women’s equality, hunger, violence, climate change, and poverty. The students are daring to ask the big questions and challenging the idea that the “richest country in the world” would allow for children to go to be hungry.
They are asking:
- How we will respond to 25 million people filing for unemployment within 2 months?
- What will policy makers and leader do to use COVID-19 as a way to impact true disparity and equity issues?
- Will we “band-aid” the issues once again, muddle through and allow for nearly 30% of our citizens continue within the struggle.
This is what I have dedicated my career to – working at CareSource has given me the insights into how these issues have a major impact on overall health. And COVID-19 is shining a spot light on the work that is needed to address these gaps – not only within issue like housing, but within issue of housing for African American, Latino, the LGBTQ+ communities and truly look at the data and address the systems that are lacking and that have allowed for this disproportional impact of these populations. I am looking for the helpers that are daring to ask the big questions and working internally at their companies and organizations to be intentional in the customized response that will lead to better outcomes, not just for COVID, but for quality of life across the board.
What questions are you daring to ask?
#findingthehelpers #healthequity #sdoh
Educating, Equipping, Engaging and Empowering = Economic Mobility. Reexamine thinking to re imagine poverty solutions.
4 年Sadly, physical (social) distancing separates us to a greater degree, while at the same time whetting our appetites for contact with each other. Unfortunately, our preferential contacts concentrate us into smaller and smaller circles of influence. It's harder to see a smile through a mask, much more so when you don't know where that other person has traveled and touched lately. The savagery of the Covid-19 virus is carving out, and splitting us further apart. Through out human history plagues have decimated populations and furthered declines into economic and social isolation - which in turn creates deeper, wider and more numerous pockets of poverty Our hope? A counter-intuitive initiative. Relationships are the sledge hammers that obliterate societal differences.