"Lives cut short: COVID-19's heavy burden on older Latinos"
U.S. News & World Report interviewed Dr. Michael Rodriguez about how the pandemic has eaten away at the Latino edge in life expectancy.
In December 2020, about 10 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Javier Perez-Torres boarded a bus from Los Angeles to Tijuana, Mexico, to buy a bracelet for the upcoming birthday of one of the five granddaughters who lived with him and his wife. Perez-Torres, 68, a Mexican immigrant, liked the selection of inexpensive jewelry available in the city just south of the U.S. border, so he made the trek, which lasted more than four hours round-trip.
Perez-Torres wore a mask on the bus. But shortly after he returned to his family’s apartment in the working-class neighborhood of Boyle Heights, just east of downtown Los Angeles, he fell ill with COVID-19. He suffered from a high fever, a hacking cough and body aches. His wife, Alicia Miron, and their five granddaughters also contracted COVID-19, but none became as ill as the patriarch, who ended up at nearby White Memorial hospital.
For more than a month, Miron went to the hospital to see her husband, who’d been intubated. But nurses – following COVID-19 safety protocols – wouldn’t let her in. She’d sit on a bench outside the hospital for hours, then go home, and repeat the process.
Faculty Referenced by this Article
Robert J. Kim-Farley, MD, MPH, is a Professor-in-Residence with joint appointments in the Departments of Epidemiology and Community Health Sciences
Assistant Dean for Research & Adjunct Associate Professor of Community Health Sciences
Director of Field Studies and Applied Professional Training
Professor of Community Health Sciences & Health Policy and Management, and Associate Dean for Research
Related Content
Dr. James Macinko, professor in the UCLA Fielding School departments of Health Policy and Management and Community Health Sciences, was interviewed about his research into the impact of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Read Full Article
USAID funding helped save 91 million lives over the past 20 years—new analysis warns that recent U.S. aid cuts could now put that progress at risk
Read Full Article