Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Latinos have been among the communities hit hardest from the health effects of the virus. Join Washington Post Live for conversations with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Santa Ana Mayor Vicente Sarmiento about the lessons learned from the last two years and structural solutions for the future.
“It's like trying to fly a jet plane without having gone to the courses on how to fly to begin with. If you try to go all the way from the start, you're never going to succeed. So, you can't expect communities who haven't had access to have the best outcomes. And the more we prevent communities from having readily accessible access to the things we need; we’re going to continue to suffer.” – Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra (Video: Washington Post Live)
“We’re certainly in a less dangerous phase but there’s still danger when you still have some 2000 Americans dying every day from COVID. You still have several thousand in hospitals every day because of COVID. Some 60,000-70,000 cases every day because of COVID, you’re not out of the woods, but we’re in a far different place than we were a year ago, a month ago, even a week ago.”- Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra (Video: Washington Post Live)
“The misinformation has been out there, fast and furious and it’s made it difficult, especially for communities where the information they get sometimes is hard to come by or it’s not clear who they can trust. And so, we’ve tried very hard, that’s where I mentioned earlier that, we don’t wait for folks to come to us, we go to them. And we use trusted voices to make sure we’re communicating. Whether it’s the priest, whether it’s the school teacher, whether it’s the soccer coach, we’re going to use those who really do connect with families because we want them to know that we want to include them.”- Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra (Video: Washington Post Live)
“My dad used to say, “It’s not what you say, it’s what you do…” All I learned all my life was perform, get it done…And that’s what we’re going to do. And fortunately, we have a president who lets me get things done, I’m going to continue to do them so long as I have an opportunity cause that’s what I learned when I grew up.”- Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra (Video: Washington Post Live)
“It’s really challenging because I think a lot of our community because many are monolingual Spanish speakers…Hitting send on an email and thinking that’s how you message to a community like ours is not the way to communicate. The way to communicate is embedding yourself in neighborhoods talking to people and establishing that trust.” - Santa Ana Mayor Vicente Sarmiento (Video: Washington Post Live)
“I believe being responsible and being incremental in the way we transition out of this pandemic, so I do applaud the Governor and the White House for giving us steps that are forecasting how we move forward. I think for communities like Santa Ana, not all policies fit all regions and so I think for those of us who have dealt with this in such an acute and such a strong way and been so impacted, I think we want to take slow steps out of this.” - Santa Ana Mayor Vicente Sarmiento (Video: Washington Post Live)
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra
Santa Ana Mayor Vicente Sarmiento
Content from SOMOS
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(Video: Washington Post Live)
Improving Health Equity for Latino Americans
The co-founders of a health care network that delivers culturally-competent health care to low-income communities of color in New York City discuss ways to improve healthcare for those who need it – and provide a roadmap for political elites struggling to reach Latinos by focusing on health care.