About Us.
The Collaborative is uniquely positioned for the task at hand.
The Collaborative is a Equity Knowledge Hub to assist in the development of equitable solutions to major equity and health challenges by creating platforms to manage data, analysis, and evidence in order to monitor, measure, and explain equity gaps. This process of translating existing knowledge into clear, actionable recommendations will be accomplished through building a network among multi-sector stakeholders and by sharing and co-creating knowledge and building capacities of community practitioners.
The Collaborative is uniquely positioned to achieve these goals. It draws from faculty, experts, staff and students from across Massachusetts public institutions of higher education, independent policy centers, community health centers and community organizations. Our multi-disciplinary team building the Knowledge Hub includes medical doctors, public health experts, social scientists, and policy professionals with considerable experience in developing similarly sized initiatives. Together our institutions span the Commonwealth and as a team we form a cadre of trilingual (Spanish, Portuguese and English) community-focused investigators connected to underserved communities.
COVID-19 pandemic has had disproportionate effects on communities of color.
Since March 2020, the United States has been experiencing the spread of coronavirus throughout the country. Different measures have been taken by governments, on different levels, in order to stop the spread of the virus, provide tests, facilitate the access to care and, ultimately, get people vaccinated. However, those efforts need to take into consideration the social markers of the diverse population of the country, as socio-economical and racial/ethnical differences. As we are all in the same storm, facing a nearly unknown virus, we are definitely not on the same boat, as the risk of being infected, as well as the likelihood of getting proper health care or having access to vaccination, are largely dependent on the social context in which we live and work. It is not surprising at all that, following a historical tendency of infectious diseases affecting minorities at disproportionally higher rates than the rest of the population in the United States, COVID-19 pandemic has had disproportionate effects on communities of color. In Massachusetts, Latinos account for 12.3% of the population, according to the American Community Survey (2018) and, while it is rather obvious that inequality is in the fabric of everyday life, which can be clearly identified when comparing average income, access to health insurance, housing conditions, and several other markers, the sanitary crisis has exposed, and even increased, the discrepancies between the Latinx and non-Latinx population.
A more equitable COVID-19 response.
In order to address the specific issues regarding the Latinx population in Massachusetts, a collaborative of researchers and policy professionals across institutions and regions, with decades of history working together on equity-centered initiatives, joined forces to create The Latinx Knowledge Hub, aiming to foster a more equitable COVID-19 response. As government agencies gather and provide general information about the effect of and actions toward COVID-19 pandemic on the general population, it is rather obvious there is a need for quality information about underserved racial and ethnical populations, as Latinxs in Massachusetts. In times when fake news is spreading in an unprecedent speed, the lack of specific information on this racial-ethnic group, along with the possibilities brought by the ICT’s and general feeling of insecurity, just builds up the perfect scenario for misinformation delivered not only to ordinary people but also to policy makers and organizations. In an effort to respond to the informational gap about Latinx population, the Hub brings this dashboard, which focus on trends of Latinx vaccination rates across the state. Using data provided by the government, this initiative aims to use Latinx lenses to analyze numbers, find trends, and provide information tailored to bring awareness and service to both ordinary people and as well as groups involved with Latinx equity, as Community Based Organizations, policy makers and governments at the state and municipal level.
The Task Ahead:
What: Engage communities to develop a surveillance system to identify emerging COVID-19 misinformation.
Why: COVID-19 misinformation hampers COVID-19 testing and vaccination efforts. As such, misinformation needs to be identified, tracked, understood, and addressed.
How: Engage community leaders (hair stylists, barbers, religious leaders, community health workers) in each of the top 10 Latinx cities and towns in Massachusetts. Interview them to gauge existing misinformation. Follow-up periodically to identify new misinformation or modification of prior beliefs.
Outputs: A surveillance database containing existing misinformation about COVID-19 available to public health officials, providers, policymakers, community leaders and other stakeholders.