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Navigating inequities: a roadmap out of the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed social inequities that rival biological inequities in disease exposure and severity. Merely identifying some inequities without understanding all of them can lead to harmful misrepresentations and deepening disparities. Applying an ‘equity lens’ to bring inequities...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BMJ Publishing Group
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7825252/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33479019 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004087 |
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author | Ismail, Shainoor J Tunis, Matthew C Zhao, Linlu Quach, Caroline |
author_facet | Ismail, Shainoor J Tunis, Matthew C Zhao, Linlu Quach, Caroline |
author_sort | Ismail, Shainoor J |
collection | PubMed |
description | The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed social inequities that rival biological inequities in disease exposure and severity. Merely identifying some inequities without understanding all of them can lead to harmful misrepresentations and deepening disparities. Applying an ‘equity lens’ to bring inequities into focus without a vision to extinguish them is short-sighted. Interventions to address inequities should be as diverse as the pluralistic populations experiencing them. We present the first validated equity framework applied to COVID-19 that sheds light on the full spectrum of health inequities, navigates their sources and intersections, and directs ethically just interventions. The Equity Matrix also provides a comprehensive map to guide surveillance and research in order to unveil epidemiological uncertainties of novel diseases like COVID-19, recognising that inequities may exist where evidence is currently insufficient. Successfully applied to vaccines in recent years, this tool has resulted in the development of clear, timely and transparent guidance with positive stakeholder feedback on its comprehensiveness, relevance and appropriateness. Informed by evidence and experience from other vaccine-preventable diseases, this Equity Matrix could be valuable to countries across the social gradient to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by abating the spread of inequities. In the race to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, this urgently needed roadmap can effectively and efficiently steer global leadership towards equitable allocation with diverse strategies for diverse inequities. Such a roadmap has been absent from discussions on managing the COVID-19 pandemic, and is critical for our passage out of it. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7825252 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-78252522021-01-29 Navigating inequities: a roadmap out of the pandemic Ismail, Shainoor J Tunis, Matthew C Zhao, Linlu Quach, Caroline BMJ Glob Health Analysis The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed social inequities that rival biological inequities in disease exposure and severity. Merely identifying some inequities without understanding all of them can lead to harmful misrepresentations and deepening disparities. Applying an ‘equity lens’ to bring inequities into focus without a vision to extinguish them is short-sighted. Interventions to address inequities should be as diverse as the pluralistic populations experiencing them. We present the first validated equity framework applied to COVID-19 that sheds light on the full spectrum of health inequities, navigates their sources and intersections, and directs ethically just interventions. The Equity Matrix also provides a comprehensive map to guide surveillance and research in order to unveil epidemiological uncertainties of novel diseases like COVID-19, recognising that inequities may exist where evidence is currently insufficient. Successfully applied to vaccines in recent years, this tool has resulted in the development of clear, timely and transparent guidance with positive stakeholder feedback on its comprehensiveness, relevance and appropriateness. Informed by evidence and experience from other vaccine-preventable diseases, this Equity Matrix could be valuable to countries across the social gradient to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by abating the spread of inequities. In the race to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, this urgently needed roadmap can effectively and efficiently steer global leadership towards equitable allocation with diverse strategies for diverse inequities. Such a roadmap has been absent from discussions on managing the COVID-19 pandemic, and is critical for our passage out of it. BMJ Publishing Group 2021-01-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7825252/ /pubmed/33479019 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004087 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2021. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Analysis Ismail, Shainoor J Tunis, Matthew C Zhao, Linlu Quach, Caroline Navigating inequities: a roadmap out of the pandemic |
title | Navigating inequities: a roadmap out of the pandemic |
title_full | Navigating inequities: a roadmap out of the pandemic |
title_fullStr | Navigating inequities: a roadmap out of the pandemic |
title_full_unstemmed | Navigating inequities: a roadmap out of the pandemic |
title_short | Navigating inequities: a roadmap out of the pandemic |
title_sort | navigating inequities: a roadmap out of the pandemic |
topic | Analysis |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7825252/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33479019 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004087 |
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