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The U.S. population has suffered worse health consequences owing to COVID-19 than comparable wealthy nations. COVID-19 had caused more than 1.1 million deaths in the U.S. as of May 2023 and contributed to a 3-year decline in life expectancy. A coalition of public health workers and community activists launched an external review of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's pandemic management from January 2021 to May 2023. The authors used a modified Delphi process to identify core pandemic management areas, which formed the basis for a survey and literature review. Their analysis yields 3 overarching shortcomings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's pandemic management: (1) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leadership downplays the serious impacts and aerosol transmission risks of COVID-19, (2) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leadership has aligned public guidance with commercial and political interests over scientific evidence, and (3) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance focuses on individual choice rather than emphasizing prevention and equity. Instead, the agency must partner with communities most impacted by the pandemic and encourage people to protect one another using layered protections to decrease COVID-19 transmission. Because emerging variants can already evade existing vaccines and treatments and Long COVID can be disabling and lacks definitive treatment, multifaceted, sustainable approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic are essential to protect people, the economy, and future generations.

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INTRODUCTION: Studies have shown mixed findings regarding the impact of immigration policy changes on immigrants' utilization of primary care. METHODS: We used a difference-in-differences analysis to compare changes in missed primary care appointments over time across two groups: patients who received care in Spanish, Portuguese, or Haitian Creole, and non-Hispanic, white patients who received care in English. RESULTS: After adjustment for age, sex, race, insurance, hospital system, and presence of chronic conditions, immigration policy changes were associated with an absolute increase in the missed appointment prevalence of 0.74 percentage points (95% confidence interval: 0.34, 1.15) among Spanish, Portuguese and Haitian-Creole speakers. We estimated that missed appointments due to immigration policy changes resulted in lost revenue of over $185,000. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that immigration policy changes were associated with a significant increase in missed appointments among patients who receive medical care in languages other than English.

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Lebanon is one of the most unequal countries in the world, whose economy, social welfare and public health system struggle to meet the needs of the Lebanese and over one million Syrian refugees. Researchers applied Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) methodology in collaboration with a non-governmental organization (NGO) in an underserved Beirut neighborhood from 2014 through 2016, aiming to address health inequities, build social cohesion among refugees and host populations, and empower community members to develop a community health intervention. We recruited a community advisory board (CAB), conducted six focus groups and sixteen individual interviews, and held several community meetings. In response to the study findings, NGO staff, researchers and community members agreed to work together on a trash collection initiative as a community health intervention. Ultimately, we found the CBPR toolkit to be insufficient to the empirical reality: a series of structural challenges due to entrenched local and national hierarchies, ineffective political processes, and inter- and intra-group conflict driven by competition over privatized social services. Together these resulted in a lack of trust in the collaborative process wherein study participants solicited researchers for aid in return for their involvement, mirroring the Lebanese patronage system. Ultimately, the most expedient path toward change was not through empowerment of oppressed community participants, but through the action of already powerful local individuals. In conclusion, structural inequalities limit the participatory and emancipatory possibilities of CBPR research. Power mapping exercises, which are often used in community organizing, offer an important opportunity to assess viability and lay the groundwork for CBPR projects. Academic and popular media in the Middle East often focus on religious, sectarian conflict; however, in our study conflict both between and among social groups was driven by competition over material resources more than cultural or religious differences.

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