339 - The Lows and Highs of Native American Communities' Struggles With COVID-19
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 28 June 2021
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Native American communities were especially hard hit during the pandemic with COVID cases 10 times that of the rest of the US. Dr. Allison Barlow talks with Stephanie Desmon about how the Native Americans went from the highest rates of cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities to the highest vaccination rates in the US with 70-95% of the community fully vaccinated. They also talk about how much the rest of the US can learn from these successes, and how the intrinsic values of indigenous communities can mean better health for all people.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 4 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former Commissioner of Health in Baltimore City. |
| 0:20.0 | Our goal is to bring |
| 0:21.7 | scientific evidence and experience to current topics in public health through engaging interviews |
| 0:27.1 | with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. |
| 0:32.8 | If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question at jh.edu. |
| 0:40.4 | That's public health question at jhh.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:46.6 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of public health on call. Today, Stephanie Desmond |
| 0:51.8 | talks to Dr. Allison Barlow, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health, about the lows and highs of the COVID-19 pandemic among Native American communities. |
| 1:02.9 | She talks about one great success and what others can learn from it. |
| 1:07.0 | Let's listen. |
| 1:08.5 | Alison Barlow, thank you so much for joining me. |
| 1:10.8 | It's great to be here with you again, Stephanie. |
| 1:13.1 | Thank you. |
| 1:14.3 | I'm here because I wanted to give our listeners an update on what's been going on in the Native American communities because of COVID. |
| 1:22.9 | And I think we should just start with the basic question is how has COVID affected these tribes? |
| 1:28.3 | Native American communities experience the highest rates of COVID, the highest case fatality rates, the highest hospitalizations, |
| 1:36.2 | and all the after effects that come with that devastation. |
| 1:40.5 | So because of lockdowns in already poor communities, their economic systems were incredibly stressed |
| 1:49.6 | because the schools were shut down and there's poor broadband access. |
| 1:55.4 | Kids had difficulty doing any school at all in some rural tribal communities. |
| 2:00.4 | So you can just see there was just such a giant |
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