Category: Social Determinants of Health

see saw with earth as fulcrum and a pile of vaccines weighing down one side with nothing on the other side.

What Happened to the COVID-19 Vaccine Patent Waiver?

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By Sarah Gabriele

In June 2022, after almost two years of debate over a potential COVID-19 vaccine patent waiver, the World Trade Organization adopted the Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement (“WTO Decision”), which provided for a partial waiver of intellectual property rights.

More specifically, the WTO Decision waived patent rights on vaccines and allowed for the use of protected clinical trial data for regulatory approval of vaccines. However, after almost four months since the adoption of the WTO Decision, there is still a large gap in vaccination rates worldwide.

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Pile of envelopes with overdue utility bills on the floor.

The Unfurling Crisis of Unfunded Isolation, Testing, and Treatment of Infectious Disease in the US

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Steven W. Thrasher

For many politicians in the United States, the summer of 2022 was a time of trying not to think about the coronavirus pandemic—though, if they were concerned about the risk that they, their neighbors, and their constituents were facing, they should have been paying very close attention. By August, there were about 500 to 600 COVID deaths a day, accounting for more than a “9/11’s worth” every week, a level of death twice what it had been in the summer of 2021.

But for gay men in the United States, the summer of 2022 was a time of worrying about a whole new viral epidemic: monkeypox. The variant of the MPX orthopoxvirus circulating globally in 2022 has behaved very differently than it had in previous outbreak, acting as a sexually transmitted infection and moving almost exclusively through the bodies of gay men.

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SAINT LOUIS, MO. - August 2, 2021: A protestor holds a sign reading "Evictions Are Violence" at a protest held days after the federal eviction moratorium expired.

U.S. Eviction Policy is Harming Children: The Case for Sustainable Eviction Prevention to Promote Health Equity

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Emily A. Benfer

Without a nationwide commitment to sustainable eviction prevention, the United States will fail the rising number of renter households at risk of eviction. Worse still, the country will set millions of children on the path of long-term scarring and health inequity.

A staggering 14.8% of all children and 28.9% of children in families living below the poverty line experience an eviction by the time they are 15. For children, eviction functions as a major life event that has damaging effects long after they are forced to leave their home. It negatively affects emotional and physical well-being; increases the likelihood of emotional trauma, lead poisoning, and food insecurity; leads to academic decline and delays; and could increase all-cause mortality risk.

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Technician holding tube of blood for testing in the research laboratory.

Fighting Diagnostic Discrimination and Stigma in Monkeypox

Katie Gu Leave a comment

By Katie Gu

History recently repeated itself when technicians from two major laboratories refused to accept blood samples from patients testing for monkeypox. 

This August, the U.S. saw the largest increase in monkeypox cases in the world. In the midst of a nearly 80% increase in U.S. cases, phlebotomists from Labcorp and Quest Diagnostics reportedly turned away potential monkeypox samples. Such refusals dangerously parallel instances of diagnostic discrimination against HIV/AIDS patients in the 1980s and 1990s. 

Within both eras, such actions have fueled stigma, propagated misinformation, and encouraged scapegoating in the middle of public health crises. 

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Barbed wire in front of blue sky.

The Struggle to Survive in the Pandemic Prison

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Jamal Spencer and Monik C. Jiménez

Prisons, jails, and other carceral facilities have been core sites of the COVID-19 pandemic, from initial outbreaks in Chinese prisons to some of the largest outbreaks in the U.S. The uniquely dangerous physical conditions within carceral facilities (i.e., overcrowding, poor ventilation, and lack of sanitation); a high prevalence of chronic diseases among incarcerated people; and high levels of physical movement through facilities, resulted in environmental conditions ripe for uncontrolled SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

As early as June 2020, the mortality rate from COVID-19 among incarcerated people was three times higher than the general population and the infection rate five times higher. Yet, despite these inequities, the human toll of COVID-19 among incarcerated people has remained behind the walls and in the shadows. Without intentionally centering the voices of those who have lived in the most extreme conditions of social and physical marginalization, we fail to understand the full toll of the pandemic and impair our ability to respond humanely to future crises. 

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Austin, Tx/USA - May 23, 2020: Family members of prisoners held in the state prison system demonstrate at the Governor's Mansion for their release on parole due to the danger of Covid-19 in prisons.

Federal Failures to Protect Incarcerated People During Public Health Crises

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Rachel Kincaid

As the COVID-19 pandemic persists, and as we face the reality that future pandemics are coming (or have already begun), it’s a fitting time for the United States to take stock of how the carceral system has exacerbated the harms of COVID-19, and for policymakers to seriously consider what can and should be done differently going forward.

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Washington, D.C. skyline with highways and monuments.

COVID-19 as Disability Interest Convergence?

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Jasmine E. Harris

Some have suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic could be a moment of what critical race theorist Derrick Bell called “interest convergence,” where majority interests align with those of a minority group to create a critical moment for social change.

It would be easy to think that interests indeed have converged between disabled and nondisabled people in the United States. From education to employment, modifications deemed “unreasonable” became not only plausible but streamlined with broad support.

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3d render, abstract fantasy cloudscape on a sunny day, white clouds fly under the red gates on the blue sky. Square portal construction.

A Different Future Was Possible: Reflections on the US Pandemic Response

Justin Feldman Leave a comment

By Justin Feldman

The inadequacies of the early U.S. pandemic response are well-rehearsed at this point — the failure to develop tests, distribute personal protective equipment, recommend masks for the general public, protect essential workers, and take swift action to stop the spread.

But to focus on these failures risks forgetting the collective framing and collective policy response that dominated the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. And forgetting that makes it seem as though our current, enormous death toll was inevitable. This dangerously obscures what went wrong and limits our political imagination for the future of the COVID-19 pandemic and other emerging crises.

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Empty hospital bed.

Do No Harm: A Call for Decarceration in Hospitals

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Zainab Ahmed

In an era of mass suffering, some still suffer more than others. What’s worse, there is nothing natural about it. It is human made.

As an emergency medicine resident at a large academic hospital in Los Angeles, I see how incarcerated patients’ suffering is sanctioned by hospitals and medical professionals, despite their pledge to do no harm.

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A stethoscope tied around a pile of cash, with a pill bottle nearby. The pill bottle has cash and pills inside.

We Haven’t ‘Learned the Lessons of COVID’ Until We Remake the Political Economy of Health

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant

Over the course of the pandemic it has been popular to claim that we have “learned lessons from COVID,” as though this plague has spurred a revolution in how we treat illness, debility, and death under capitalism.

Management consulting firm McKinsey, for example, writes that COVID has taught us that “infectious diseases are a whole-of-society issue.” A Yale Medicine bulletin tells us that we successfully learned “everyone is not treated equally, especially in a pandemic.” These bromides reflect the Biden administration’s evaluation of its own efforts; a recent White House report professes to have “successfully put equity at the center of a public health response for the first time in the nation’s history.”

We have learned nothing from COVID. The ongoing death, debility, disability, and immiseration of the pandemic are testament only to a failed political economy that pretends at magnanimity.

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