Public health practitioners and researchers—especially those working on the front lines of this pandemic—have been working non-stop since March 2020. Many came together to prevent and mitigate the tragic and predicted inequitable patterns of COVID-19 outcomes across the nation and world. Many also learned more about public health during this time. Even so, much of the public health work has continued to be overlooked, misunderstood, confused with healthcare or thought to be only about vaccination. While there have been many sweet victories over this time demonstrating our collective love and solidarity, unfortunately, the persisting systemic issues of racial oppression continue to impede the health justice efforts and create new challenges for us.
The COVID Task Force on Racism and Equity (Task Force), which is co-chaired by Drs. Bita Amani (lead) and Chandra Ford, is pleased to launch the Rapid Assessment of COVID Evidence (RACE) Series. The series curates recent research conducted by the Task Force throughout the pandemic on COVID inequities and social injustices. Articles in the series are published in Ethnicity and Disease through January 2023. Together the Introduction to the series and the accompanying short video provide a sneak peek into the work we have been doing over the course of the pandemic. This series is intended to document – through the peer-review literature – the challenges and opportunities that have arisen over this time.
To ensure community members can access the papers, we have been intentional about selecting an open-access journal in which to publish the research findings. Ethnicity and Disease is committed to advancing knowledge on health equity while making its articles available widely. Members of the public can freely access each paper in the series; no academic affiliation or journal subscription is required.
We are grateful to everyone who has been involved with the COVID Task Force on Racism & Equity at one point or other. We also appreciate the community partners with whom we have been in partnership and the study participants who gave generously of themselves during these taxing times.
We look forward to hearing from you about this work and engaging with you about the work you all have been continuing to do.
In struggle for health equity,
Bita Amani and Chandra L. Ford
Support for the Rapid Assessment of COVID Evidence (RACE) Series was provided in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.
