Topics include therapy updates, vaccine development, pandemic’s racial divide
Looking at exposure in answer to COVID-19’s racial divide
Five months into the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, data are clear that the disease severely sickens and kills people of color at starkly higher rates than white people.
After eliminating any theories of a genetic basis for lack of evidence, Dickinson and team launched a study focused largely on exposure and access to healthcare in search of answers behind the racial gap.
“Race is a social construct much more than a biological one, and so the evidence does seem to point more toward the social factors that pattern exposure,” Dickinson said.
Dickinson shared findings from surveys conducted between May 12 and June 7, a first wave of a three-wave multi-state study conducted by the interdisciplinary Risk and Social Policy Working Group. Researchers compared answers between Blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, and other/multi-racial respondents. Read more about JPB Fellow Katy Dickinson’s research.