Jonathan Kanter, Adam Kuczynski, and Edwin Lindo co-authored this opinion piece in the Seattle Times about stressors on marginalized communities
Pandemic lays bare the everyday stressors, inequities of marginalized communities
By Jonathan Kanter, Edwin Lindo, and Adam Kuczynski
Special to The Times
On March 14, two weeks after the first U.S. coronavirus death was announced here in King County and as an onslaught of social distancing policies descended on our communities, we began a research study to understand how 500 King County residents were coping with all of it. Every evening, study participants have been generously sharing with us how they are doing, specifically in terms of their mental health.
Because of our work on health-care inequities and racism, we were concerned about the impacts on communities of color. As it turned out, there was much reason for concern. Three months later, it is crystal clear that socially marginalized communities have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Across America, many Black, Asian, Latinx and indigenous people, and poor white people, are living and working in conditions that make it harder to avoid the virus, have more underlying health conditions increasing risk, have less access to testing and medical care, and are dying at staggeringly higher rates. In King County, Black, Latinx, those with limited English proficiency and indigenous people are showing higher rates of infection, and Spanish-speaking Latinx people, in particular, are showing higher death rates.
So what can our study tell us about how this is playing out in terms of mental health?
Read the entire article here.