U.S. Spends $23 Million on Culturally, Linguistically Diverse COVID-19 Outreach ...

[IceWizard]

U.S. Spends $23 Million on Culturally, 
Linguistically Diverse COVID-19 
Outreach for Minorities






Dealing with a devastated economy and the worst unemployment 
crisis in history, the U.S. government is quietly spending $23 million 
on “culturally and linguistically diverse” COVID-19 outreach and 
education in racial and ethnic minority and disadvantaged 
communities. The goal is to develop a national and statewide 
network of public and community-based organizations that will 
help mitigate the virus’s disproportionate impact among that 
demographic, according to one of the recently published 
grant announcements. A separate allocation will revive an 
Obama-era program that gave leftist groups tens of millions 
of dollars to help poor, minority and indigenous communities 
attain “environmental justice.” Under that project the 
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will reopen the 
State Environmental Justice Cooperative Agreement Program 
(SEJCA) to help “underserved communities” and 
“vulnerable populations” deal with COVID-19.

The biggest chunk of money, $22 million, will come from the 
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which 
just launched a
 National Infrastructure for Mitigating the Impact of COVID-19 within Racial and Ethnic Minority Communities. 
The agency’s Office of Minority Health (OMH) will dole out 
the cash to “community-based organizations” that are considered 
“trusted and usual information sources for racial and ethnic 
minority, rural and disadvantaged communities.” The organizations, 
most likely leftist groups, will use the taxpayer dollars to 
“disseminate effective response, recovery and resilience 
strategies and ensure service linkages for racial and ethnic minority,
 rural and disadvantaged communities hardest hit by the COVID-19
pandemic.” This includes identifying areas with minority and 
disadvantaged people at substantially greater risk of contracting 
the virus and adverse outcomes due to prevalence of underlying 
health conditions such as  hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, 
obesity, asthma, and COPD/lung disease as well as structural and 
systemic barriers to physical distancing and challenges to accessing 
healthcare and social services. The money will flow for up to three 
years so the community groups can document and distribute 
“lessons learned” and other findings.

Here is why HHS, whose mission is to enhance and protect the 
health and well-being of all Americans, is dedicating tens of 
millions of dollars to this new venture: “Emerging data suggests 
racial and ethnic minority populations are experiencing 
disproportionate impact and worse health outcomes from COVID-19,” 
according to the grant document. “Past public health crises, 
like the H1N1 pandemic and Zika epidemic, have demonstrated 
and amplified the vulnerability of these populations. Specifically, 
when combined with a greater baseline prevalence of underlying 
health conditions, a public health crisis like COVID-19 further 
exacerbates the higher morbidity and mortality for racial and 
ethnic minority communities. Due to lack of resources and limited 
capacity to provide healthcare and social services, rural communities 
are also vulnerable to adverse COVID-19 outcomes in the 
immediate and long term.”

The EPA will dedicate $1 million to the coronavirus minority cause 
by bringing back Obama’s wasteful environmental justice initiative 
that filled the coffers of numerous leftist groups, including those 
that help illegal immigrants. Under the new project, nonprofits 
will work with underserved communities to understand, promote 
and integrate approaches to provide meaningful and measurable 
improvements to public health. The agency identifies underserved 
community as those with “environmental justice concerns and/or 
vulnerable populations, including minority, low income, rural, 
tribal, indigenous, and homeless populations.” In a document 
attached to the grant announcement, the EPA goes into tremendous 
detail about its new initiative to address the impacts of the COVID-19 
pandemic on urban and rural low-income and minority communities.

Examples of eligible projects related to COVID-19 include the 
development of outreach programs to educate underserved and 
vulnerable populations about EPA-approved disinfectants and how 
to properly use them as well as managing trash removal within 
communities; “Healthy Homes” campaigns to share information 
about in-home environmental and health hazards that may increase 
vulnerability due to extended periods indoors resulting from local 
stay-at-home orders; other activities that educate, raise public 
knowledge and awareness toward achieving behavioral changes 
that improve health or prevent environmental pollution. To encourage 
participation the government will offer childcare, free disinfectants, 
translation services and material in “appropriate literacy levels for 
the impacted communities with environmental justice concerns.”




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[barq2]

Not sure of the background to this as I'm in the UK. We've faced issues with people whose limited grasp of English meant they weren't following the social distancing rules (they didn't know about them).

In general I am critical of money spent translating materials into other languages (I'd make exceptions for stuff to do with people trafficking and life-threatening situations). Also with this pandemic I think it's probably better to spend a few million on having the crucial information translated, in order to avoid there being a kind of reservoir of COVID-19 among certain ethnic or cultural groups that could reignite the whole situation again.

My reasons for mostly being mostly against translation services, from a left-wing perspective, is that while it seems inclusive it ultimately does people no favours. If you don't speak the language of the country in which you live, your options as an individual are incredibly limited. Furthermore, there is a very well established psychological principle (called The Contact Hypothesis) that the more people from different groups mix in a friendly way, you get increased liking and trust between the groups. Language is so fundamental to having any quality of interaction with said member of other group, that it blocks the contact from being positive, possibly even makes it negative, and so does nothing to help cultural or religious harmony between groups. So that's my leftie argument against the majority of translation.

There is what I'd see as emergency information that might need translating (i.e. if people can't read this in the own language they could die, or something very bad happen). But then at the other end of the spectrum you get money being spent on translating everything, or even providing translator services - so there's no incentive to learn English. I'd take the money used for translation and use it to teaching people English. Future immigration to the UK should require a certain level of written and spoken English language skills.

As for where information should be disseminated, I supervised some reached about this... in the UK, South Asians are especially prone to developing T2 diabetes. Since we have the NHS, their medical costs will be absorbed by the taxpayer. It is far cheaper to prevent than treat. To reach an act-risk chunk of the population, I think mosques and gurdwaras (obviously temporarily closed) could be a good place to have booklets on avoiding T2D, or inviting an expert in to speak about diabetes and how to minimise risk. In fact I don't see why that wouldn't apply to other places people congregate including churches or pubs.

Not sure how the USA has got to $23m for COVID-19 info. Someone is doing very well out of that contract, and it isn't the taxpayer. I can't defend $23m, but reaching out cultures in this acute emergency might be worthwhile. However in the long term it would be better if translations aren't needed because people's English is good enough.

I don't know enough about how finances in the US work to comment further and there are some sections where I'm unfamiliar with the background. But I think it interesting to compare the situation in the US to the UK.