Unpacking the health and social consequences of COVID-19 through a race, migration and gender lens

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as an unprecedented challenge for healthcare systems across the world. To date, there has been little application of a race, migration and gender lens to explore the long-term health and social consequences of COVID-19 in African, Caribbean and Black (ACB) communities in Canada, who have been disproportionately impacted by this pandemic. The evidence presented in this commentary suggests that recovery strategies need to adopt an intersectional lens taking into account race, migration and gender since ACB women and ACB immigrant women have been among the populations most impacted both personally and economically. To do so, there is an urgent need to incorporate variables capturing race, beyond “visible minority” status; gender, beyond looking at differences between women and men; and factors to help understand the complexities of migration trajectories (i.e., beyond the dichotomy of born in Canada versus not born in Canada categories) in Canadian datasets. We provide examples of policy and practice initiatives that will be urgently required to address the needs of these population groups as these race-based data become available.