Emily Mendenhall, professor of global health at Georgetown University and author of Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji (out in March 2022), has published a new opinion piece in Scientific American titled “How COVID, Inequality, and Politics Make a Vicious Syndemic.”
Co-authored by Clarence C. Gravlee, the piece explores how overlapping diseases and social conditions in the United States continue to dictate who is hurt most badly by the novel coronavirus.
Scientific American’s podcast series COVID, Quickly also recently discussed Unmasked during a segment about anti-mask attitudes. In the episode, SciAm’s Josh Fischman talks about what Emily Mendenhall learned during many months of conversations with anti-mask residents of her hometown, Okoboji, Iowa. Okoboji’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic—along with the cultural squabbles, local politics, and social dynamics that impeded public health efforts there—is the subject of Unmasked.
Cover image credit: Ryan Reid
New Series Announcement: Global Black Writers in Translation