Health Equity Institute at Tulane University

The mission of the Health Equity Institute at Tulane University is to conduct interdisciplinary research to address health inequities, to enhance human health through engagement of disadvantaged communities and populations and to serve as a resource for education and training – particularly for the next generation of health equity scholars. This mission reflects a commitment to principles of social justice in the effort to understand and reduce health inequities. The Health Equity Institute serves as a forum to promote scholarship on interactions between multiple levels of influence on health – ranging from broader social forces to the cellular level. These factors are studied in relation to unresolved health inequities, which are conceptualized as unjust patterns in the distribution of disease burden that are avoidable and preventable.

COVID-19 is a global public health challenge as well as a major health equity issue. It interacts with and compounds other public health crises, such as those related to climate change and pollution. COVID-19 also simultaneously exposes and exacerbates longstanding health and social inequities. Some of those inequities are systematic differences in living conditions that impact exposure, disparities in access to protective resources such as diagnosis and testing as well as bias in treatment and medical decision-making which shape COVID-19 outcomes, and also, physical distancing policies which have widened health and social inequities. Beyond the immediate health impact of the pandemic, these collateral societal consequences, particularly for disadvantaged communities, are likely to reverberate and continue to impact well-being.