By Megan J. Shen
There is a common myth that Asians in the U.S. are successful and free from racial bias. This is often referred to as the ‘model minority’ myth.
This myth is not only inaccurate and a gross overgeneralization, but it also hurts public health efforts to address health inequities among Asians in the U.S.
By Megan J. Shen
How COVID-19 vaccines roll out in the U.S. will highlight the nation’s priorities, and potentially also its persistent disparities.
Top of the list to receive the vaccine are frontline healthcare workers, who were the first to receive Pfizer’s new vaccine this week.
Next will come long-term care facility residents and workers. This is critical, as long-term care residents have suffered perhaps the most devastating death toll, killing over 100,000 residents.
But there is still a long winter ahead where many will not yet have access to the vaccine. And it remains unclear how the next round of vaccine recipients will be allocated to serve the most vulnerable populations.
By Megan J. Shen
With the recent confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, many public health issues are seemingly on the line, including the Affordable Care Act, women’s reproductive rights, and access to in vitro fertilization. But Coney Barrett’s lack of awareness of the rampant, systemic racism in the U.S. – an oversight that generally was left out of the flurry of media coverage around her confirmation – is symptomatic of an even more pervasive and dangerous public health threat.
Senator Cory Booker’s questioning of Judge Amy Coney Barrett during her Supreme Court Confirmation hearings revealed her apparent lack of awareness of systemic racism. Booker brought up Coney Barrett’s ruling on a workplace discrimination case.
“This employee claimed that he had been subjected to hostile work environment, and that the supervisor called him the N-word,” Booker said, “But you ruled that the employee had failed to make the case that he had been fired in retaliation for his complaints about race discrimination.”
This instance is one of the clearest demonstrations of the systemic racism prevalent in the U.S. due, in large part, to a lack of anti-racist training and education.
Inequities in end-of-life care have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but have yet to receive the same level of attention as some other health disparities brought to the fore recently.
Quality end-of-life care is focused on reducing human suffering and aiding patients in receiving support during the dying process.
Traditionally, poor quality end-of-life care involves the overtreatment of patients, as in the case of continuing to treat incurable cancer aggressively. However, COVID-19 has introduced new challenges in achieving quality care at the end of life. Specifically, it is now more challenging to reduce human suffering at the end of life because of limitations in providing access to two critical resources: (1) medical care that can relieve physical suffering in the dying process and (2) support, such as loved ones, as well as needed psychological, spiritual, and physical support to cope with the existential threat of dying. COVID-19 has made access to both of these a greater challenge for underrepresented minorities.