COVID-19 is like a heat-seeking missile that targets the most vulnerable. The bull's-eye is environmental justice communities, which are the poorest, the most polluted, and the sickest when it comes to comorbidities.
A Roundtable Discussion on this subject is in the current issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Justice.
COVID-19 is a civil rights issue, observes Moderator and Editor-in-Chief Sacoby Wilson, PhD, University of Maryland-College Park. The participants discuss the impact of COVID-19 in the context of issues such as inequality in access to jobs, food, housing, and healthcare, and equity implications in the context of climate change.
"COVID-19 has made many of these issues, like social determinants of health and structural racism, front-page news for America, in human terms, for the first time. I think we have to seize this moment,"
Stephen Thomas, PhD, Roundtable Participant, Maryland Center for Health Equity.
Source:
Journal reference:
(2020) Environmental Justice Roundtable on COVID-19. Environmental Justice. doi.org/10.1089/env.2020.0019.
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