COVID-19's impact on 'at-risk' groups focus of Mount Sinai institute
Mount Sinai Health System has established a research institute to investigate COVID-19's disproportionate impact on "at-risk" communities, with plans to partner with a wide spectrum of experts to fashion solutions across the metropolitan area, including Long Island.
“Even before this pandemic, we have known that low-income, nonwhite, non-English speaking, disabled, some LGBTQ populations, have disproportionate burdens of illnesses like diabetes and hypertension and heart failure," said Dr. Carol Horowitz, the director of Mount Sinai's new Institute of Health Equity Research. "Now COVID is hitting those populations the hardest, right? And so we really need to think about why these disparities exist."
Medical experts said people with underlying health issues — called comorbidities — could be more vulnerable to COVID-19's ill effects.
Health Department data has shown blacks and Latinos in New York State and New York City have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, at rates higher than their shares of the population. On Long Island, blacks have died from the virus at a higher rate than their share of the population, though Latinos have not.
"COVID concentrates where people live in overcrowded homes, where people have more exposure to air pollution, where people don’t have this luxury to stay at home, or get their food and medicines delivered," said Horowitz, who is also a professor of medicine and dean for Gender Equity in Science and Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "These are structural problems that we need to deal with.
"COVID put a spark, in that leaders from around the New York area and even around the country, came together and said we need to do something, and we need to do something now," Horowitz said of the task force of academics and high-profile finance and business leaders Mount Sinai has formed to help guide its efforts.
While the health disparities that COVID-19 has revealed is the immediate focus, Horowitz said, "this will not stop with COVID. These efforts will continue, and we’ll be looking at other chronic diseases and other health problems" that have a disproportionate impact on at-risk groups.
The institute is partnering with more than 100 community groups in areas where Mount Sinai has hospitals and other medical facilities — New York City, Long Island, Westchester and parts of New Jersey — to survey communities about needs related to COVID-19, Horowitz said.
Called “Speak Up on COVID-19,” the goal of the survey, to be available in 11 languages, is to identify whatever needs specific communities have, and then work toward solutions.
Dorella M. Walters, senior director of external program affairs for God's Love We Deliver, said the nonprofit was involved in helping to design the survey. "We are tasked with not just distributing the survey to our own client base, but also to other agencies, because our goal is to saturate the community to get as much response as possible," Walters said. She said the goal was to reach 10,000 people. Walters said God's Love We Deliver, based in Manhattan, provides medically tailored meals to a catchment area that includes Long Island.
Ellen Miller-Sonet, chief strategy and policy officer of CancerCare, which provides "psychosocial" support groups and one-on-one counseling to clients across the nation, including Long Island, said she also was involved in designing the institute's survey. She added that Mount Sinai's partnership with community-based groups was critical, noting a "lack of trust" some minorities have in the medical establishment. She said "trusted" community groups may help bridge that divide.
Of the institute, Miller-Sonet said, "I think there’s a huge need, and I’m thrilled to be part of it."
Other outside experts applauded Mount Sinai's efforts and expressed interest in participating. Horowitz said the institute was developing an "Equity Ideas Lab" to which they would be soliciting input from people.
"I think that the studies they are proposing to do is great," said Andrea Ault-Brutus, Nassau County's health equity director. "I look forward to collaboratively working with them on those studies. I think it’s vitally important."
Theresa Sanders, president and chief executive of the Urban League of Long Island, noted her group was in the midst of conducting its own survey of COVID-19's economic impact on the Island's black community. "I'm fascinated with this piece that Mount Sinai is doing," she said, adding she would "sign up" to be part of the health system's research effort if given the opportunity.
