Securing Health in a Troubled Time
An online event series
Forty million people live in poverty in the United States, a reality at odds with our great wealth and espoused principles. Health inequities, including dramatically decreased life expectancies and severe illness for Black Americans, as well as increasing deaths in rural white America from suicide and drug overdoses, signify immense suffering among millions of Americans.
Yet the Covid pandemic has thrown these long-known problems of injustice in American society into even starker relief. Black and brown people are suffering and dying in profoundly disproportionate ways. The pandemic affects all people, but especially marginalized groups and those who keep the country going without the luxury of working from home, having personal transportation, or a safe place to live. In our polarized nation, there is greater recognition that Black lives matter, and also emboldened white supremacy, along with disregard for science.
This series will explore the potentials and the dangers of this moment in time—how can we capture this opportunity to redress longstanding injustice and build a more equitable society? What values might change the cultural and political narrative? What policies might best achieve a living wage, affordable housing, access to high quality education, and health care? What is systemic racism and how can it be addressed?
“Securing Health in a Troubled Time: Equity, Ethics, and the Common Good” examines the social causes of health inequities and identify policies and practices to achieve healthier lives for all of us.
The first in the new series is “Health Equity, Racism, and This Moment in Time.”
The second in the series is “Public Trust in Science.”
The third in the series is “Vaccine Access, Vaccine Hesitancy: Challenges to Herd Immunity.”
The fourth in the series is “Vaccine Mandates and Passports: Are They Legal and Ethical?”
This series made possible by the generous support of the Gil Omenn & Martha Darling Initiative for Trusted and Trustworthy Scientific Innovation and the Donaghue Foundation Impact Fund.