Health Disparities, Mental Health, and Resiliency in Disasters
In preparation for this journal, you must have watched the two videos “Hurricane Katrina” and “Boatlift” and listened to the podcast episode “America Dissected: Coronavirus: Going the Distance: Covid-19 and Mental Health”.
At the time of originally writing this assignment, the United States and the world as a whole have been grappling with coronavirus and Covid-19 for over six months. No one has escaped some form of this pandemic’s effects. Although Hurricane Katrina happened 15 years prior to the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, there are similarities emerging between these two events in terms of their respective impacts on health disparities, mental health, and resiliency in the face of disasters. Four years before Hurricane Katrina (and almost 19 years before the coronavirus pandemic), another traumatic disaster occurred: September 11, 2001 (“9/11”).
During times of large-scale traumas and disasters, it is important to critically evaluate who is impacted by them and how, and how these impacts will differ by populations. Also during these incomparable disasters, it is equally important to identify ways that people build resiliency and hopefully heal over time.
In your Journal here, reflect upon the following (It is okay to number your responses as this will help with grading):
Compare and contrast the “Hurricane Katrina” video and the “America Dissected” podcast episode. In the video, they say if you were a black homeowner, you were how many times more likely to have lost your home than if you were a white homeowner? As of 2015 (10 years later), what % of residents have returned to the Lower Ninth Ward (a primarily Black neighborhood in New Orleans)? Discuss the racial health disparities noted in the podcast. Although these are two very different types of large-scale traumatic events, why do you think similar racial health disparities emerged from Hurricane Katrina and the coronavirus pandemic?
In the podcast, they use the terms the “Health haves and health have nots”. How would you define these two groups of people? They further discuss that from a public health perspective, we need to invest as a society in ways to alleviate stressors that impact health and that “health is a shared good that we must invest in.” Identify two specific stressors that impact health during a disaster and suggest at least one “investment” you would make as a public health professional that would address these stressors.
In the podcast, a highly respected public health leader, Dr. Sandro Galea is interviewed, and he says the following: “Covid-19 is a trauma. It is a trauma that instills fear, threatens our social fabric, threatens our daily life. And so we are seeing a traumatic event that we all are experiencing together, which is a classic definition of a large-scale traumatic event.” As little or as much as you are comfortable sharing, what are specific stressors that you and/or important people in your life have experienced during the coronavirus pandemic that directly affected your health and/or mental health? Thinking about the podcast discussion about building social supports, what social supports have you relied on? Have these supports been digital or in some other way? How have you been the social support for someone in your life?
Provide me with your thoughtful reaction to watching “Boatlift.” As part of your response, include whether or not you knew about this boatlift prior to watching the video. Think about the podcast and the video “Boatlift”. What gives you hope during uncertain times, specifically during the pandemic? Define resiliency in your own words. How have you built it during this time?