« Gardez le vaccin au Sud » : mieux comprendre l'hésitation à la vaccination contre la COVID-19 au Nunavik

The COVID‑19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of vaccines to prevent infectious diseases, but also the issues related to vaccine acceptance among individuals and groups targeted by vaccination programs. The concept of vaccine hesitancy is now commonly used in public health spheres to refer to the fact that a portion of the population has significant doubts and concerns about vaccines that can lead to a vaccine refusal or delay. Most research on vaccine hesitancy focuses on individual knowledge, beliefs, values, attitudes, life trajectories and experiences. However, the focus on individual determinants of vaccine hesitancy can lessen the importance of broader structural and socio-cultural influences on attitudes and decisions about immunization. Based on interviews conducted in Nunavik, this article proposes to explore how organizational and historical factors, social norms, and shared values and beliefs about the etiology of COVID‑19 and the efficacy and usefulness of vaccines to prevent the virus, influence COVID‑19 vaccine hesitancy in Inuit communities.Alternate :La pandemia de la COVID‑19 evidenció la importancia de la vacunación para prevenir las enfermedades infecciosas, pero también los retos ligados a la aceptación de las vacunas entre individuos o grupos específicos. El concepto de desconfianza en la vacunación se volvió de uso común en la salud pública para referirse al hecho de que una parte de la población tiene temores importantes relacionados con la vacunación;temores que pueden llevar al rechazo o postergar la vacunación. La importancia de los conocimientos, creencias, valores, actitudes, trayectorias de vida y experiencias individuales en las investigaciones sobre la vacunación a veces puede ocultar la importancia de influencias estructurales y socioculturales más amplias sobre las actitudes y decisiones con respecto a la vacunación. A partir de entrevistas realizadas en Nunavik, este artículo se propone explorar cómo los factores organizacionales e históricos, las normas sociales, los valores y las creencias compartidas respecto a la etiología de la COVID‑19 y sobre la efectividad y el poder de las vacunas en la prevención, influyen sobre la desconfianza en la vacunación contra la COVID‑19 en las comunidades inuit.Alternate :La pandémie de la COVID‑19 a mis en évidence l'importance de la vaccination pour prévenir des maladies infectieuses, mais également les enjeux liés à l'acceptation des vaccins par les individus et groupes ciblés par les programmes. Le concept d'hésitation à la vaccination est désormais couramment utilisé en santé publique pour référer au fait qu'une partie de la population entretient des craintes importantes par rapport à la vaccination ;craintes qui peuvent mener à refuser ou à retarder la vaccination. L'accent important mis sur les connaissances, les croyances, les valeurs, les attitudes, les trajectoires de vie et les expériences individuelles dans les recherches sur la vaccination peut toutefois occulter l'importance des influences structurelles et socioculturelles plus larges sur les attitudes et décisions à l'égard de la vaccination. À partir d'entretiens menés au Nunavik, cet article propose donc d'explorer comment les facteurs organisationnels et historiques, les normes sociales, les valeurs et les croyances partagées à propos de l'étiologie de la COVID‑19 et à propos de l'efficacité et de la puissance des vaccins pour la prévenir, influent sur l'hésitation à la vaccination contre la COVID‑19 dans des communautés inuit.

Émergence des vulnérabilités de soignants en première ligne au cours des urgences sanitaires. De l'épidémie d'Ebola à la COVID-19 au Sénégal

Based on results of ethnographic study about social construction of trust, this article describes experiences of the Ebola Virus Disease epidemic. The author describes how, on the front line of the disease, response to an unpredictable epidemic in a country with limited resources such as Senegal, relies on the capacities of health workers not very visible, who have a precarious status, and who are not considered to be health personnel but who provide essential "ordinary" care on a daily basis through "tasks delegation". The article describes the patient's care itinerary, contact case identification modalities and the profile of the caregivers considered as "contacts". The author describes their experiences, the social and financial effects of home assignment, which reinforces their double professional and social vulnerability as well as their suffering. Locked in a "health subsystem" at the entrance of the health pyramid, these invisible caregivers are the most exposed, the least protected or supported. In context of a country with a fragile health system, this analysis should contribute to a sociological understanding of the usual role of caregivers in the public health system and in epidemic situations, but also to understand contours of an "organized" and institutionalized invisibility that compromises epidemic responses.Alternate :Basado en los resultados de un estudio etnográfico sobre la construcción social de la confianza, este artículo describe las experiencias vividas durante la epidemia de la enfermedad viral del Ébola. Muestra cómo, en primera línea ante los enfermos, los dispositivos para responder a una epidemia imprevisible en Senegal dependen de las capacidades de los agentes sanitarios poco visibles, con estatus precario, que no son considerados como miembros del personal de salud pero que aseguran de manera cotidiana lo esencial de la asistencia sanitaria «rutinaria». El artículo presenta el itinerario de la atención del paciente, las modalidades de identificación y el perfil del personal sanitario considerados como «contactos». La autora describe su vivencia, los efectos sociales y financieros de la asignación en domicilio, la cual refuerza la doble vulnerabilidad profesional y social, así como sus padecimientos. Confinados en un «subsistema de salud» en la base de la pirámide sanitaria, ese personal sanitario invisible es el más expuesto, el menos protegido o apoyado. Este análisis contribuirá al conocimiento sociológico del rol habitual y en situación de epidemia del personal sanitario en el sistema de salud pública, y por otra parte permitirá comprender los contornos de una invisibilidad «organizada» e institucionalizada que compromete la respuesta a las epidemias.Alternate :Basé sur les résultats d'une étude ethnographique sur la construction sociale de la confiance, cet article décrit les expériences vécues lors de l'épidémie de la maladie à virus Ebola. Il montre comment, en première ligne face aux malades, les dispositifs de réponse à une épidémie imprévisible au Sénégal reposent sur les capacités des agents de santé peu visibles, au statut précaire, qui ne sont pas considérés comme faisant partie des membres du personnel de santé, qui assurent au quotidien l'essentiel des soins « ordinaires ». L'article décrit l'itinéraire de soins du patient, les modalités d'identification et le profil des soignants considérés comme des « contacts ». L'auteure décrit leur vécu, les effets sociaux, et financiers de l'assignation à domicile qui renforce la double vulnérabilité professionnelle et sociale ainsi que leurs souffrances. Enfermés dans un « sous‑système de santé » à l'entrée de la pyramide sanitaire, ces soignants invisibles sont les plus exposés, les moins protégés ou soutenus. Cette analyse devrait permettre, d'une part, de contribuer à une connaissance sociologique du rôle habituel et en situation d'épidémie de ces soignants dans le système de soins publics, et, d'autre part, d'appréhender des cont ur d'une invisibilité « organisée » et institutionnalisée qui compromet les ripostes épidémiques.

Pandémie de rougeole, 1988-1992. Virus, vaccinations de masse et vulnérabilités contemporaines

At the turn of the 1990s, measles swept the world. Vaccine-preventable since 1963, the "first disease" is nevertheless one of the great absentees of a pandemic century that is slow to come to an end, if not to make it the incarnation of a rampant anti-vaccinationism. Through a chronicle of the "crisis" of 1988‑1992, we will return to the process of coproduction between the infection and the technologies that protect against it. In particular, we will address the social dimension of the viral infection in order to understand why mass vaccination, at the heart of a strong eradication effort, is not enough to revent measles and even contributes to increasing health inequalities that influence its epidemiology in return. The COVID‑19 experience urges us to conduct this kind of retrospective work and to mobilize history as a discipline of public health to better understand the place of vaccination in the viral and contagious past and present. WHO documentation, scientific literature and ethnographic fieldwork will together force an "equal" approach to the spaces and actors involved, bringing together very local experiences and international policies to reveal the pitfalls of an ultratechnologized and very vertical global (public) health.Alternate :A principios de los años 1990, el sarampión asoló al mundo. Evitable con la vacuna desde 1963, la «primera enfermedad» es sin embargo una de las grandes ausentes de un siglo pandémico que tarda en acabarse, si no es para encarnarse en una anti-vacunación galopante. A través de una crónica de la «crisis» de 1988-1992, retornaremos el proceso de coproducción entre la infección y las tecnologías de protección. Abordaremos en particular la dimensión social de la infección viral para comprender por qué la vacunación masiva, en el centro de una campaña de erradicación apoyada, no basta para evitar el sarampión e incluso contribuye al aumento de ciertas desigualdades en salud que influyen sobre su epidemiología. La experiencia de la COVID‑19 nos exhorta a realizar este tipo de trabajo retrospectivo y a movilizar la historia de la salud pública para comprender mejor el lugar de la vacunación en el pasado y el presenta viral y contagioso. Documentos de la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS), literatura científica y trabajo de campo etnográfico contribuirán conjuntamente a una perspectiva «a partes iguales» de los espacios y los actores para mostrar los obstáculos de una salud (pública) global ultra-tecnologizada y muy vertical.Alternate :Au tournant des années 1990, la rougeole a balayé le monde. Évitable par la vaccination depuis 1963, la « première maladie » est pourtant une des grandes absentes d'un siècle pandémique qui tarde à s'achever, si ce n'est pour en faire l'incarnation d'un antivaccinationisme rampant. Au travers d'une chronique de la « crise » de 1988-1992, nous reviendrons sur le processus de coproduction entre l'infection et les technologies qui en protègent. Nous aborderons plus particulièrement la dimension sociale de l'infection virale pour comprendre pourquoi la vaccination de masse, au coeur d'une entreprise d'éradication appuyée, ne suffit pas à éviter la rougeole et participe même à accroître certaines inégalités en santé qui influent sur son épidémiologie. L'expérience de la COVID‑19 nous exhorte à mener ce genre de travail rétrospectif et à mobiliser l'Histoire en discipline de santé publique pour mieux saisir la place de la vaccination dans le passé et le présent viraux et contagieux. Documentation de l'OMS, littérature scientifique et terrain ethnographique forceront ensemble une approche « à parts égales » des espaces et des acteurs concernés, faisant dialoguer les expériences très locales et les politiques internationales pour révéler les écueils d'une santé (publique) globale ultra-technologisée et très verticale.

Between Empirical Data and Anti-Blackness: A Critical Perspective on Anti-Asian Hate Crimes and Hate Incidents

While women are more likely to report a hate incident to the StopAAPIHate reporting site, multiple sources of data show that men are as likely or more likely to experience a hate incident than women. [...]Asian Critical Theory (or AsianCrit) allows us to examine how race and racism affect the lives of Asian Americans within US society.5 Through this theoretical lens, we can better understand our unique racialization as Asian Americans;this racialization positions us as both model minorities and perpetual outsiders to US society. [...]even if not always dominant, the interspersal of images of Black-on-Asian-crime in coverage of anti-Asian violence tends to emphasize physical assaults by Black individuals, thereby playing on commonly accepted racist stereotypes of Black criminality.10 And while we may recognize that dominant discourses of safety and its antithesis (e.g., with regard to anti-Asian violence) are rooted in white supremacy and anti-Blackness (Jenkins 2021), most critiques of anti-Asian violence rarely examine the interconnections between them.11 For this reason, a large part of our paper calls for a critical racial analysis of widely circulating narratives around racist incidents against Asian Americans and their racialization as non-Black people of color. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND NARRATIVE CONTEXT In January and February of 2020, the first cases of COVID-19 in the United States were detected by public health agencies.12 The source of the virus was likely China (ibid), but the World Health Organization advised media organizations not to "attach locations or ethnicity" to the disease to avoid stigmatizing ethnic groups.

Guest Editors' Preface

In moments of crisis that test the stability of US nationalism—the civil war, the expansion of American empire, World Wars I & II, the civil rights era, the post-industrial era, 9/11, COVID—a pattern of violence against Asian Americans seems to make an appearance. Nearly a third of the nurses who have died of coronavirus in the United States are Filipino, even though Filipino nurses make up just 4% of the nursing population nationwide.2 Over 1.2 million Asian Americans labor in food-related industries nationwide—at farms, food processing factories, grocery stores, and restaurants—and are placed at higher risk of infection and mortality.3 In the spring of 2021, in the span of two months, lone white gunmen murdered Asian Americans in Atlanta, Indianapolis, and San Jose (all of the victims were essential service workers). In presenting the data, Wong and Liu invite us to consider how anti-Black tropes and invocations of a persistent "Black-Asian conflict" diverted attention away from the role of white supremacy in fomenting an anti-Asian climate. The new White House immediately promised to "Build Back Better" with a sweeping plan to restore domestic stability and the nation's reputation abroad;implied was the beating back of Trumpian revanchism.

The Why and Whither of Asian American Studies: Toward a Reckoning

Yuri Kochiyama (1921–2014) On March 11, 2020, roughly three months after the first death attributed to the newly discovered SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) virus was confirmed in Wuhan, China, the World Health Organization elevated its characterization of the ensuing outbreaks from "public health emergency of international concern" (PHEIC) to global pandemic. [...]we editors, along with the contributors to this special issue, acknowledge from the outset that the formation of Asian American studies—along with ethnic studies and gender/sexuality studies—was first and foremost a paradigmatic endeavor, one that, as Lisa Lowe productively characterizes it, remains "key to thinking in comparative relational ways about race, power, and interconnected colonialisms. More than a few students found themselves spending more time in the community than in school. [...]were born a host of Asian American community organizations and services, as well as an increasing vector of Asian American political activism in defense of our communities. "4 Such reckonings, intimately tied to the formation of Asian American studies as a critical race-based interdiscipline born out of 1960s civil rights movements and liberation fronts, encapsulate the field's aspirational politics.

Education Remains Critical with Unemployment, Employment, and Participation Rates in 2020 Being the Worst in Many Years for Aboriginals and Non-Aboriginals

The higher the level of education completed the higher the wage rates, the lower the rate of unemployment, and the higher the employment rates. Unemployment rates were significantly higher and participation and employment rates were significantly lower for Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals in Canada in 2020. This may be attributed to the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. The rate of unemployment increased more for nonAboriginals than for Aboriginals in 2020. However, participation and employment rates decreased more for Aboriginals than for non-Aboriginals. Employment, unemployment, and participation rates are and historically have been more favourable for non-Aboriginals than for Aboriginals. As educational levels increase, employment measures and wage rates improve. Employment measures are examined by gender, age, province, and education, and for Métis, Inuit, and First Nations.

Abolition as Durational Performance: Mutual Aid Aesthetics in Chicago's Southeast Asian Neighborhood

Responses to rising anti-Asian violence during the COVID-19 pandemic prompted multiple, often conflicting, actions including calls to defund the police, calls for more police, bystander interventions, and the exploitation of violence to promote influencers' brands. In Chicago's "Argyle" Uptown neighborhood, an area known as a Southeast Asian refugee business district, Asian Americans and local white government officials promoting liberal multiculturalist urban renewal projects used the news after the Atlanta spa shooting to advance their plans for gentrification and increased policing. How do we understand the colliding narratives of racial antagonisms, racial solidarities, and the genocidal logics of urban renewal, as they emerge at the intersection of settler colonialism and the afterlife of slavery? How is this question complicated by the entwined issues of refugee resettlement and multiculturalist solutions to anti-Asian violence? In this article, I argue abolition as durational performance offers an embodied, performance studies based analytic and methodology for the study and praxis of abolition. Abolition as durational performance centers the creation of life-affirming institutions, relations, and spaces while navigating the histories and bodily impacts of white supremacy, anti-Blackness, native genocide, and US liberal war on refugee resettlement as it is enacted through urban renewal and redevelopment projects. I focus on Axis Lab, a community-based arts and architecture organization based in Chicago, which launched its mutual aid and public arts project in June 2020. This is an abolitionist project inspired by the Black Panther breakfast and political education programs.

A/Moral Divide: Questions for an Asian American Studies Research Paradigm

Research for the community ultimately aims to effect social change. Transpacific studies offers an analysis about global power, war and colonial presence, and unequal exchanges between nations that explores the transnational ties of Asian Americans.11 For instance, Laura Kina and Wei Ming Dariotis's work examines the intersection of American empire and the racialized/gendered representations of mixed-race Amerasians. The promise of transpacific studies and critical refugee studies is that they not only assess the traumas, needs, and conditions of Asian American communities, but they also examine the subjectivities, hopes, and futures of migrants and refugees as active, creative agents themselves.14 For example, transpacific scholar Wesley Ueunten writes about resistance to the construction of an American military base in Okinawa: Old people, as old and tiny as my Baban [grandmother] in my memories of her, have come to sit on the beach every day in quiet but unrelenting resistance to American Manifest Destiny and Japanese fatalistic dependency on that Destiny. In theory then, the genealogical and discursive analyses of transpacific studies and critical refugee studies would shed light on how we view social realities, and illuminate what's often missing in the analysis of these concepts.

Editors' Preface

[...]many authors suggest that the ideas and critiques and activist struggles that established the field either remain or, having shifted away, are now being revisited. Yê´n Lê Espiritu, in her article in this issue, looks at the ways critical refugee studies demands the global study of race, imperialism, and war, beyond the domestic landscape of what some consider Asian American studies. Jean-Paul R. Contreras deGuzman, and Douglass Ishii in a separate essay, share candid reflections on the life of contingent labor in the university and what is being asked of a field that claims to center critiques of power and work for transformative justice.

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: INVOKING THE FAMINE AND PESTILENCE CLAUSE TO BE PAIRED WITH THE MEDICINE CHEST CLAUSE FROM THE NUMBERED TREATIES

La pandemie de la COVID-19 nécessite des strategies directement en lien avec les Traites pour repondré å la situation unique des communautés des Premieres Nations du Canada à ľintérieur des territoires vises par ces Traites. Une approche fondée sur eux est primorbdiale afin de reconnaítre et d'appliquer certaines dispositions qu'ils contiennent. Ces dispositions induent celle relative à la disette et á la peste et celle relative a la trousse de soins, toutes deux acceptées dans ľaccord ayant menė ā la signature du Traite no 6 en 1876. Dans la disposition relative à la disette et à la peste, la Couronne a accepte de porter assistance aux peuples autochtones en cas de catastrophes, telles que les attaques de criquets, les tempetes, la famine et la maladie. La disposition de la trousse de soins donne les moyens de fournir de ľ aide medicale lors de ces situations de crise, aliant de pair avec la disposition de la disette et de la peste. Le Gouvernement du Canada a done urre obligation legale d'invoquer immédiatement ces dispositions ensemble comme stratégie de réponse à la propagation de la pandemie de la COVID-19.

Queering Diasporic Desi Solidarity: South Asian Activism in US and UK Multiracial Social Movements

This article explores the linkages between queerness, racialization, activism, and community care in the South Asian diaspora. It examines activism, organizing, and social movement work practiced by queer diasporic South Asians in the UK and the United States. By analyzing the South Asian activist relationship to, and solidarity and partnership with, Black liberation activism, this article conceptualizes a framing of queer South Asian diasporic solidarity. This solidarity is framed through contrasting articulations of joint struggle, allyship, and kinship in queer communities. To articulate this struggle, the article contrasts histories of South Asian racialization, politicization, and queerness in the UK and the United States, and synthesizes first-person activist accounts of modern-day queer South Asian activists in the diaspora. Finally, it argues that queer feminist South Asian activists in both countries are employing a model of queered solidarity with Black activists and Black liberation, though in differing forms in each country, that centers queer intimacies and anti-patriarchal modes of organizing for liberation across queer communities of color.

To Write in Unwellness: Documenting A/P/A Voices

In this collectively written essay, we write as volunteers with A/P/A Voices: A COVID-19 Public Memory Project to share and hold space for this archive's stories, images, sounds, and silences. A/P/A Voices first emerged in Spring 2020 when a group of public-facing scholars, activists, and cultural workers converging at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU recognized the critical need to document the myriad experiences of Asian Americans, Asian immigrants, and Pacific Islanders during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the past year and a half, A/P/A Voices volunteers have conducted over seventy-five oral histories with community organizers, mutual aid workers, healthcare workers, and cultural workers across the country, and over seventy-five artifacts (artwork, videos, other ephemera) have been donated by participants. Through a collective form of writing we describe as dwelling in unwellness, we consider how the A/P/A Voices project and its improvised form of curation—informed by interruption, relational co-laboring, listening, and slowness—is necessitated by prolonged crisis. We ourselves are not outside of the pandemic;rather, as scholars, cultural workers, activists, and caregivers who navigate different levels of precarity, we are entangled within and beyond its folds. Thus, our writing with, rather than about, this project begins with the following questions: How do we connect our experiences of crisis to A/P/A Voices and to one another? How is our work enacted in solidarity with other communities of color devastated by racism and carceral violence, as well as disproportionate economic violence and the uneven effects of an ongoing public health crisis? What does it mean to engage a memory project from a place of unwellness?

The Geopolitics of Anti-Asian Violence: Cold War Contradictions In the Era of "Building Back Better"

In this formulation, the US-ROK Alliance—what the State Department deems the "linchpin of peace, security, and prosperity" in the region—stands not as a form of military occupation or imperial clientelism, but one of righteous defense from regional bogeyman such as the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).3 The endemic violence of US militarism—from sexual exploitation in military "camptowns" to the extralegal status of US servicemen—is rendered a mere footnote to a program of liberal internationalism which claims to preside over what the US military euphemistically terms a "Free and Open Indo-Pacific. "4 Blinken's easy distinction between the singular act of the Atlanta shootings and the routinized violence of US imperialism speaks to the contradictions at the heart of the Biden administration's aspiration to restore both racial liberalism and global US power.5 Since the campaign trail, platitudes about restoring global US leadership have made up the core of the Biden administration's foreign policy platform. [...]Biden pitched his presidency as a means to reinstate the era of racial liberalism in order to "restore the soul of the nation" from the crude racism of the Trump era.7 Asian /Americans have been cast to perform the work of legitimation under the intersecting projects of racial liberalism and US hegemony—from the symbolic inclusion of Asian /Americans into the US national body to the incorporation of allied Asian states into a US-led orbit of militarized peace.8 On the one hand, Asian /Americans have become a performative symbol of a reascendant racial liberalism. What does it mean, then, in a region still shaped by Cold War imperialism, to proclaim that "America is back," as Kamala Harris did on her first trip to Asia as Vice President in August 2021?13 Even more, how do we make sense of the declaration of a "new" Cold War, emerging as it does from the unfinished business of an "old" Cold War that never ended?

It's Raining Lemons! How the COVID-19 Pandemic Reshaped the Association of Jewish Libraries

The Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL), an international organization promoting Jewish literacy and scholarship and supporting Judaica librarians from K-12 schools to research institutions and archives, to community adult education programs,1 was no different. While the association had worked previously with an external company to increase its fundraising efforts in support of annual conferences and other member services, 2019 was the first time AJL hired a dedicated staff member-albeit a short-term contract employee-to concentrate on development. Following a midwinter meeting held online using Zoom, AJL leadership realized that its far-flung volunteers could meet much more easily in this virtual space. The public programs showcased AJL talent and resources, furthering the organization's mission to provide access to information and research and to promote Jewish literacy, while at the same time advertising the organization to potential members.

Editor's Note

Since July 2020, nearly five thousand downloads of articles have been recorded on the journal site, accessed by readers from hundreds of locations around the globe. [...]my AI advisor warned me that, "This research can be time-consuming and requires a strong foundation in Jewish history, literature, and culture, as well as the ability to interpret and contextualize the information gathered." Diane Mizrachi, Ivan Kohout, and Michal Bušek describe in their article how the University of California Los Angeles Library handled the discovery of Nazi-looted books in its stacks not only by returning the physical items to their lawful owners-the Jewish Religious Community Library in Prague, under the auspices of the Jewish Museum-but also by engaging the public in problems of historical provenance and raising awareness of similar cases in the academic context. Applying legal concepts of tangible, moveable property to rare books and considering post-custodial methodologies and digital technologies, Kiron proposes reconciling the conflict between private property rights and public cultural heritage interests by collaborating on open digital spaces that allow access to cultural treasures while preserving-or even increasing-their market value.

COVID-19 and the Ugandan Presidential Election: Contesting Lockdown Authority in Popular Songs

The COVID-19 pandemic struck when Uganda was in the middle of an acrimonious campaign season, in which longstanding president Yoweri Museveni was being challenged by Bobi Wine, a reggae singer turned politician. When Museveni imposed a strict lockdown, musicians sympathetic to Wine responded with songs about COVID-19 that challenged the government's short-term, biopolitical demarcation of the national emergency. Pier and Mutagubya interpret a selection of Ugandan COVID-19 pop songs from 2020, considering in musical-historical perspective their various strategies for re-narrating the health crisis.

Why Digital Health Literacy Matters in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa: How Bridging the Digital Health Literacy Gap Could Improve Access to Health Services and Social Equality

Around the world, mobile phones have been used for quite some years now to put healthcare systems into interactive action through various mobile health applications. The results regarding efficiency, access, greater social equality, and interconnectivity are proven, and they promise to mitigate economic and educational gaps. All this is increasingly the case in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where the technological prerequisites are quickly evolving. About 500 million people in SSA--more than 46 percent of the region's population--were subscribing to mobile services in 2020, and their numbers are forecast to reach 615 million in 2025. In the meantime, coverage works also in the structurally poorest areas. In 2020, 2G mobile network coverage in Burkina Faso was 81 percent for the territory and 92.4 percent for the population. The high penetration rate of mobile phones and the increasing coverage of the mobile network has created a vast variety of opportunities for health provision. Mobile devices can no longer be ignored in practical health delivery and disease prevention workflows.

COVID-19 racism and the perpetual foreigner narrative: the impacts on Asian American students

Asian Americans are the targets of COVID-19 racism across the United States, suffering verbal attacks, physical assaults, and online harassment. Based on an analysis of in-depth interviews and social media posts, this study foregrounds the experiences of students at a predominately white, public California university in order to explore COVID-19 racism as it affects Asian Americans. We find that COVID-19 has intensified discriminatory treatment that preceded the pandemic. In particular, in the context of the ‘perpetual foreigner' narrative, Asian American students are defined as carriers of disease and as foreigners. We explore the process by which Asian Americans are cast as so-called ‘perpetual foreigners', alongside other primary themes including the particular role of zoombombings in creating and cementing fear, and Asian-American students' and community responses to COVID-19 racism.