Focusing on the United States, this presentation will explore the causes of racial and economic inequalities in COVID-19 outcomes. In particular, it will look at the roles that occupation, housing, and health care play in the US pandemic. It will contrast these structural causes of health inequalities with the emphasis on individual behavior change that characterizes much of the US pandemic response. My recent article will be closely related to much of the talk.

Speaker bio: Justin Feldman is a Health and Human Rights fellow at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. His work focuses on the causes of health inequities by race and class, with particular emphases on residential segregation and police violence. During the coronavirus pandemic, he has been researching and writing on the magnitude of racial inequality in death rates and the role of occupational exposure. Dr. Feldman received a Doctor of Science from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in 2018 and previously taught epidemiology courses at the NYU School of Medicine.