Addressing the Social Determinants of Health during COVID-19
A publication of the Local Data for Equitable Recovery Resource Hub
During our country’s experience with the COVID-19 pandemic, the disproportional effect of the social determinants of health, and the structural inequities that influence them, has become exceptionally clear, as communities of color and low-income communities have suffered higher rates of infection and death. Local stakeholders working on health equity — governments, philanthropies, nonprofits, health care organizations, and grassroots organizations — need to understand how broader environments affect our health and work to create “upstream” interventions to address these social determinants of health. Grantees in the Using Data to Inform Local Decisions on COVID-19 Response & Recovery program, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, are some of the community organizations striving to confront the inequities resulting from this long history of harmful policies and create healthier conditions for families.
As one example, Houston’s Urban Harvest and the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University are working together to address food insecurity in their communities. Urban Harvest has launched a mobile market to bring healthy food to food-insecure families, and the Kinder Institute is analyzing timely geospatial data to help them identify which communities need this service the most and potential partners in those communities.
Elevated Chicago and their partners, the Institute for Housing Studies at Depaul University and the Public Health Institute of Metropolitan Chicago, are striving to create more walkable communities in Chicago, with a particular emphasis on low-income communities and communities of color. They are now gathering data and narratives to understand how COVID-19 and racial justice protests altered their communities’ built environment and health-related needs. This new effort will help identify opportunities for investments that promote resident-defined walkability, mobility, cohesion, access to jobs and services, and transit ridership and will focus on essential workers, young people and seniors, public space, and equitable recovery and investments.
Connecting residents to much-needed food resources and promoting green spaces and walkability will help mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic’s dramatic effects on Houston and Chicago communities. With inspiration from these efforts, stakeholders across sectors in other places should consider how they can combine data, advocacy, and new services to take a more holistic approach to the many facets of health.
