cbaker_admin
Mon, 03/29/2021 – 20:30
State figures in California indicate that COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Latinos in their 30s and 40s. As of March 10, Latino people aged 35-49 years in California died from COVID-19 at 5.5 times the rate of White people the same age. The gap was even wider in December, when Latino people in this age group were nearly 7 times more likely to die than their White peers, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Latinos aged 35-49 years represent 41.5% of people in that age range in California but account for about 74% of COVID-19 deaths. The significant loss of life at younger ages, along with higher overall mortality rates, is predicted to have caused Latinos’ life expectancy nationally to decline by approximately 3 years during 2020, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, based on federal data. For years, researchers have recognized that Latinos in the United States lived longer than White people, despite social, political, economic, and environmental factors that tend to undermine health. This trend has been documented since 2006 by the federal government. However, the pandemic eliminated about two-thirds of that advantage in 1 year, says the study’s co-author, Noreen Goldman, a Princeton University demographer who has extensively studied Latino health and socioeconomic disparities in health. Community health workers, known as promotoras de salud, now seek to curb COVID-19 by informing Hispanic communities about coronavirus testing and other support services.
