Join Shobhana Xavier, Assistant Professor, School of Religion, and Eun-Young Lee, Assistant Professor, School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, in discussing how the outbreaks of COVID-19 have indicated the ways in which various marginalized communities have been impacted by unequal access to resources and the role religion has played in the spread or prevention of COVID-19.
Scholarship on religion and public health has indicated that religion is an important “social determinant” of health, particularly infectious diseases such as in historical instances of the spread of the plague or a contemporary crisis of HIV/AIDS. In light of these discussions of the role of religion, religious communities, practices and beliefs in the spread or mitigation of infectious diseases, we ask how has religion implicated the spread or mitigation of COVID-19 and how individuals with varying social identities within religious communities are impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic?
