If you were not able to view the annual Donna M. Loring Lecture Racial Health Disparities and COVID-19 in Maine: Shining Light on Systemic Inequality, sponsored by UNE’s Maine Women Writer’s Collection, a recording is now available in DUNE:Digital UNE.

 The annual Donna M. Loring Lecture addresses current or historic Native American or aboriginal issues, indigenous rights, as well as women’s issues, civil rights, and issues of fairness and equality as they overlap with the concerns of tribal peoples.

Maine is home to the worst COVID-19 racial disparity in the country, with Black and African American Mainers being impacted at an egregiously disproportionate rate. While public discourse focuses on people with “underlying health conditions” as being at greater risk of contracting COVID-19, this hides the realities of systemic racism and economic inequality at the core of such conditions. Health advocates and leaders from Maine’s Black, immigrant, Indigenous and Latinx communities will discuss how the pandemic has highlighted the systemic inequalities in food access, health care, housing and income in Maine and the United States. Panelists will discuss ways that health professionals can better serve these communities by understanding the myriad challenges their patients face in an unequal society.

Speakers
Crystal Cron, President of Presente! Maine
Fatuma Hussein, Executive Director, Immigrant Resource Center of Maine
Rachel Talbot Ross, ME State Representative; Chair, Commission on Status of Racial, Indigenous, and Maine Tribal Populations
Lisa Sockabasin, Director of Programs & External Affairs, Wabanaki Public Health 
Donna M. Loring, Senior Advisor on Tribal Affairs to the Governor