Congratulations to our friends at Front & Centered, who hosted a powerful 3-part web series “Our View from the Frontlines: What are the Gaps Between Policy and Practice?“
Panels of community and public health experts shared their experiences with the COVID pandemic, providing powerful insights on the inequties in health care access, jobs, and health outcomes that have contributed to the disproportionate impact of COVID on BIPOC communities. At the same time, speakers talked about the importance of resiliance, policy, and CBO partners in addressing COVID and other ongoing and emerging health threats within our communities.
As a BIPOC-centered conversation, while the themes included challenges and needs that BIPOC communities have, the strength of having a coalition of organizations that serve BIPOC communities. It was really motivating to think about how the power of BIPOC communities can advocate for and affect policies that improve health disparities.
The session recordings are now available:
Session 1, Session 2, Session 3.
I was fortunate to have participated as a panelist for Session 1, and facilitator for Session 2. As a panelist I spoke about the disparities we have observered from COVID testing and infection data. We also heard about findings from a UW Population Health Initiative collaboration with Front and Centered to examine the role of CBOs as public health partners during COVID.