Older adults continue to be at risk during the pandemic.
COVID-19 vaccine distribution has prompted headaches across the country. However, older adults have been especially challenged with access; those who “have less” and are dealing with economic and/or health limitations, as well as family and peer support, are struggling. For those who have experienced historical and other types of trauma, these disparities will further impact their functioning, morbidity, and mortality.
A new issue brief by the Kaiser Family Foundation details how severe the issue is.
As one of the major populations living amid factors associated with the social determinants of health (SDoH), adults over 65 have been disproportionately impacted by the virus. This age group has comprised 75 percent of all COVID-19 deaths for each month since the pandemic hit its initial peak last spring; mortality rates reached 82 percent of the population in May 2020. Since then, other concerning numbers have emerged:
Disparities in vaccine allocation and distribution for older adults also continues:
In a number of states, residents in the priority group continue to wait their turn, including my home state of Virginia. As few as 13,000 doses were available for a waiting list of over 180,000 residents last week. While the state’s new vaccine dashboard shows improvement this week, from rising vaccine availability to increased use of neighborhood and community health clinics in the vaccination effort, more must be done to promote vaccine access and distribution, especially for those eligible on priority lists.
Our Monitor Mondays Listeners Survey asked our listeners, how do you rate vaccine distribution in your state? The results spoke volumes about the realities faced by far too many individuals and can be viewed here.
Programming Note: Listen to Ellen Fink-Samnick’s live reporting on the social determinants of health on Monitor Mondays, 10 a.m. Eastern.
Well, this is the last RACmonitor news edition of the year, so it’s time for my annual Hirsch’s Heroes. As a reminder, last year my
The term “stopgap” is defined as “a temporary way of dealing with a problem, and something used as an emergency measure until something better can
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