Emily Feuerherm, University of Michigan, Flint, Michigan, USA

In the midst of the current global pandemic, there has been a lot of discussion about the role of our homes, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and communities in our experiences of health or illness. We know that there are several individual factors that influence health such as eating, smoking, and exercise habits, but there are many other impacts on our health that are determined by access to social and economic resources. Social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, play, live, work, and age. In other words, our health is affected by more than our own decisions, but also on a number of social and economic factors: the safety and security of our homes and workplaces, the quality of our schooling, the cleanliness of our water and air, and the nature of our social interactions and relationships. These social determinants of health directly impact how people experience health or disease, with inequitable distribution of resources at global, national, and local levels. Further, these unfair and avoidable differences have been shown to negatively impact COVID-19 symptoms resulting in a greater number of deaths from people with disparity-related comorbidities.

Several reports have demonstrated that racial and ethnic minoritized groups in the U.S. are being affected more dramatically by COVID-19 than white and middle-class patients. For example, the CDC reports that people of Hispanic ethnicity are “almost 3 times as likely to be uninsured” and inadequate access to health care is “driven by a long-standing distrust of the health care system, language barriers, and financial implications associated with missing work to receive care” (CDC, 2020). Furthermore, for those patients who do not speak English well or at all, getting information and access to health care will be challenging. This is particularly true for immigrants in the US who are concerned about the Public Charge Policy or are undocumented and fearful that their immigration status will be found out.

So what are we in the TESOL profession to do? We can work together, across disciplines and institutions, to help people navigate the systems of health that patients need. We are uniquely situated to educate English learners about their rights to quality and accessible health care and the processes by which they can find the care they need (e.g. how to apply for and use health insurance, how to make a doctor’s appointment, what [not] to expect at a health appointment, how to ask for an interpreter, etc.). We can also be advocates for our students by raising up their voices and stories with hospitals, clinics, other health-care providers, and policymakers. In our classes, whether working with English learners or future teachers, we can raise awareness of health disparities and work with our students to address this social justice issue.

In addition to classroom work, we need more and better documentation of how COVID-19 is affecting immigrant families in English-speaking communities through quantitative and qualitative research. We need to build partnerships with other community organizations, hospitals, and schools to ensure that information is going out in accessible ways (using plain English, translations, and multiple modalities) to account for various levels of English fluency and literacy in the first and second language. And we need our organizations, such as the TESOL International Association, to write white papers and briefs about the health policies and practices that result in better health equity for patients from minoritized backgrounds. Statements like these are an important resource for policymakers and advocates working to support English learners and speakers of minoritized languages.

Reference

Centers for Disease Control. (2020, April 22). COVID-19 in racial and ethnic minority groups. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/racial-ethnic-minorities.html