Nearly 80 percent of health outcomes are due to social determinants—the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age. Child poverty alone costs the US more than 1 trillion dollars a year in increased health-care expenditure, lost productivity, and other social costs. Improving health outcomes by extending the social and economic policies enacted to meet the COVID crisis could be a powerful mechanism to achieve greater health equity. Expanding such social supports as direct payments and the child tax credit, and improving access to health services, SNAP, and WIC would reduce health disparities among communities most impacted by the pandemic and pay off in the long run. Panelists will provide multiple perspectives on policies needed to reach health equity, examining the important roles played by community context, dignity, and sustainable funding mechanisms.

Moderator

Errin Haines
Editor-at-Large, The 19th News

Speakers

Cheri Bustos
US Representative, Illinois

Juliet Choi
President and CEO, Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum

Michael Tubbs
Special Adviser for Economic Mobility and Opportunity for Governor Gavin Newsom; former Mayor, City of Stockton