Exposing inequalities: The underlying connection between COVID and AIDS

It was mid-March 2020 and Brad Sears had a good indication of what was going to happen next. He had survived the AIDS epidemic four decades ago and based on that experience knew COVID-19 would quickly expose existing social inequalities.As a young man in the early 1980s and on a career track in law, Sears was well aware of the policy discussions around HIV/AIDS. Much of that discussion at the federal level characterized AIDS as a gay men ’s disease and thus not a priority for the Reagan-era United States. The impact of oppression and discrimination — whether measured by access to health care, poverty, mental health or substance abuse — paved the way for HIV to disproportionately affect marginalized communities, in particular m en, women and transgender people of color.For Sears, who is the founding executive director and David Sanders Distinguished Scholar of Law and Policy at UCLA ’s Williams Institute (the nation’s first university-based LGBT law and policy think tank), this would become much more than a work-related interest; he has been living with HIV since 1995.In those initial days of the COVID-19 pandemic, following emergency orders put in place by governments across the country, Sears geared up for another chapter in America ’s history in which vulnerable communities would pay a steeper price in the face of disaster.In anopinion piece published in Ms. Magazine in March 2020, Sears predicted how COVID-19 would harm these communities and offered suggestions...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news