As we approach year 5 of this ongoing pandemic, facing the possibility of many more in our lifetimes, we recognize and highlight that pandemics like these have disproportionately impacted already marginalized communities. 

These disproportionate impacts are driven by the ongoing structural marginalization of Black, Indigenous, and people of color and others already politically and structurally marginalized. Our BIPOC Fellowship and Long COVID Communicators program aims to interrupt the marginalization of BIPOC voices in the Long COVID conversation, and to support people living with Long COVID and Associated Conditions (LCAC) to tell their own stories, shift narratives, and participate in advocacy around the issues that impact their lives and communities.
 

This project is currently in its second year, and provides material and capacity-building support to Black, Indigenous, and people of color disability justice activists, artists, and researchers doing work, organizing, and/or who are living with Long COVID and associated conditions. BIPOC Fellows build community & relationships, participate in a fully-funded communications training series, get 1:1 support for publishing op-eds & other writing, and deepen communication & narrative skills, increasing the visibility and power of BIPOC voices in the Long COVID landscape, so that the conversation more accurately reflects those most impacted by LCAC.

Highlights include:

• Presenting at a webinar with the American Association on Health and Disability
• Helping to plan and implement advocacy strategies for a meeting with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
• Sharing patient perspectives with WebMD
• Presenting about patient experience and disability in various public health and activist webinars and in university classrooms.
• Receiving a mini-grant for a project titled “Breathing for Justice: Exploring the Intersections between Long COVID and Racial Justice”
• Publishing essays as part of The Color of Long COVID series by DIsability Visibility and The Sick Times
• Working with the Narrative Initiative’s WordForce Program to advise on and help draft a Long COVID style guide
• Training with History Moves at the University of Illinois-Chicago as Narrative Architects for our Listening for the Long Haul oral history project, which has produced 300 hours of oral histories from people living with Long COVID and Associated Conditions (LCAC)
• Acting as patient reviewers for the Long COVID Essentials, a resource series produced by Long COVID Justice in partnership with The Sick Times
• Being interviewed for a video series on Long COVID with the World Health Network
• Interviews and media appearances for: National Geographic and The Wall Street Journal – and much more!

Inaugural fellow: 

Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

Year two fellows: 

Jacqueline Luciano

Angela Meriquez Vázquez

Tracey Thompson

Jenna Bitar

Jenny Ba Quing

Bilen Berhanu

Anisha Sekar

Una Osato

Denise Lopez Majano