Health Disparities: Lessons from COVID-19

Health Care Disparities; Lessons from COVID-19

Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death.

-Martin Luther King

The pandemic has had profound effects on us all - the social isolation, economic impact and health effects have been unprecedented.  It has also been a stark example of the disparities in healthcare between the privileged and some of the most vulnerable segments of our population. 

Join us on July 30 for this forum about lessons of COVID-19 is teaching us about health disparities in America.  Our  distinguished panel is composed of three leading experts in medicine, healthcare delivery and government policy: Mary Bassett, HR'74, Director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and New York City’s Commissioner of Health from 2014 to 2018; Al Franken, HR '73, political satirist, writer, podcaster and former U.S. Senator from Minnesota where he was co-chair of the bipartisan Senate Rural Health Caucus and a member of the Senate Health Committee, and Prentiss Taylor HR '73, Vice President of Medical Affairs at Doctor On Demand, a leading innovative national telemedicine company, specialist in Preventive Medicine and former Medical Director at Advocate Aurora Health Care, the largest health system in the Midwest. The forum will be chaired by Vivian Lewis, HR '73, professor emerita of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, where she has served in several leadership roles in the medical school and the university focused on promoting a more diverse and inclusive faculty and future healthcare workforce.