Vulnerable Populations

COVID-19, Underlying Conditions, VULNERABLE POPULATIONS and negative health outcomes

The Summer of 2020 has brought topics out of the shadows of obscurity into the forefront as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, racial strife, and the lock-down impacts on health care. It’s a health system failure that potentially preventable events like asthma attacks are so frequently endured by patients and COVID-19 and our response to the pandemic has inspired patient activation, engagement, and empowerment in ways that would have taken years to advance. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the importance of public health, even though our response is personal. It has shown the importance of preventative actions, the upstream actions that are necessary by all to ensure that the vulnerable don’t contract COVID-19. If we replace ‘contract COVID-19’ with ‘have an asthma attack’, we can begin to see that adopting an upstream approach and personalizing public health could have the benefit of reducing negative health outcomes for patients with asthma. There is a higher incidence of asthma among minority populations and they experience a greater risk of having an asthma attack as a result of exposures. Social and environmental determinants of health factor into this vulnerability.