COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted Los Angeles’ Black and Latinx populations and other ethnic minority and disadvantaged groups. Persistent health disparities combined with housing patterns, lack of financial resources, and other factors have put members of these groups at the highest risk in the current pandemic.
A webinar, “Confronting COVID-19: The Toll of the Virus on L.A.’s Most Vulnerable Communities,” will examine the social, economic, and geographic factors that have contributed to the spread of the disease and further deepened race and class disparities.
The speakers will focus on local data showing how inequalities vary by neighborhood and shed light on some of the reasons for these neighborhood differences. A moderated discussion will follow.
The goal is to provide participants with new tools to tailor the public health response and inform public policy.
Speakers
Paul Ong‘s research focuses on spatial, racial and economic inequality. He has served on advisory committees or as an expert technical advisor for a number of public agencies including the Race and Ethnic Advisory Committee for the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Research Council, and the U.S. Department of Justice. As director of the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, Ong is currently leading a series of research that examines the direct and indirect impacts of COVID-19 on employment, renters, financial resources, the burden of sheltering-in-place, and Census 2020 responses. He is also working with the California’s Air Resource Board to develop neighborhood-level indicators related to Sustainable Community Strategies and transportation disparities.
Paul Robinson is a medical geographer with extensive experience in bringing concepts, theories, and methods from spatial science into medical research. He is an NIH Researcher and Director of the CDU Medical GIS Laboratory. Recently, Robinson has been researching the uneven geographic spread and disparate impacts of coronavirus and COVID-19 outcomes.
