Why race and income matter: Dean Dexter Voisin talks about the importance of “addressing the crisis within the crisis”

Posted on April 21, 2020
Categories: Dexter Voisin, Faculty

Healthing.ca wrote about the lack of data being collected on how radicalized and low-income communities are being affected by COVID-19. Writer Diana Duong interviewed FIFSW Dean Dexter Voisin for insight on why this is important.

“If you don’t address the crisis within the crisis, you don’t mitigate the larger crisis,” says Voisin. “All of this is interconnected.”

For instance, having a higher number of men from certain populations incarcerated means that having a higher number of women in single female-headed households raising children. This means having a higher disproportionate sample of the population living in poverty.

Living in poverty during a pandemic means not having the privilege to follow basic public health guidelines.

“If you’re living in public housing, you don’t have the luxury of physical distancing,” says Voisin. “If you’re living in poverty, you’re more inclined to be an essential worker working in fields where you have to go out to work — like being a bus driver or a home healthcare worker on the frontlines — and you’re less able to protect yourself. The social crisis and the public health crises are all of the same thread.”

> Click here to read the full article

Related news: