Big Ideas About COVID-19: Race, Inequity, and COVID-19

What has COVID-19 taught us about systemic inequity in America? How has the pandemic affected the way we think about race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, and their relationship to health-outcome disparities? What other issues of racial and social justice has the COVID-19 pandemic emphasized or exacerbated, and what comes next?

Our panel of experts will consider these questions and more as they discuss the pandemic’s disproportionate impacts on a number of vulnerable groups in the US, including African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, immigrants, and incarcerated populations.

Panel moderated by Sonja Diaz, a practicing civil rights attorney and policy advisor. As Founding Director of UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative (LPPI), Diaz co-founded the first multi-issue policy think tank focused on Latinos in the University of California.

Featured panelists include Laura Abrams, Professor and Chair of the Department of Social Welfare in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs; Randall Akee, Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Public Policy and American Indian Studies; and Courtney S. Thomas Tobin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.