As we enter flu season, and the rollout of another updated COVID-19 vaccine, Gov. Gavin Newsom acted against the interests of safeguarding California’s public health.
On the eve of Indigenous Peoples Day, he vetoed Senate Bill 435, which would have taken the important first step towards collecting data on Mesoamerican Indigenous groups, and for each major Latin subgroups.
In his veto message, he recommended waiting for updated federal standards for the collection and reporting of race and ethnicity before the state could start collecting more detailed demographic data information on its populations.
For a governor who boasts California as a national leader on a host of issues, it is disappointing that he missed this key moment to lead the nation in giving visibility to historically marginalized groups while advancing our public health infrastructure.
SB 435 would have required state departments charged with administering health and social service programs to collect specific data for individuals who speak primarily Indigenous Mesoamerican languages, and for different Latino subgroups by nationality in an anonymous and protected manner.
The context for this policy could not have been clearer.
California’s experiences with the pandemic shed light on the preexisting health disparities that impact low-income people of color. From chronic disease to lack of health care, COVID-19 preyed on the depth and breadth of the multiple barriers to health for underserved populations across the state.
For Latino communities especially, the data was stark. Despite making up 39% of the state’s population, Latinos accounted for almost half of the COVID-19 cases and 42% of total deaths.
Over the course of the pandemic, this data became a critical tool for our organization, the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, in efforts to mitigate the spread of this virus in our communities.
We demanded culturally and linguistically responsive resources to reach our Latino families. As a result, we established cross-sector partnerships with government and the philanthropic sector to create multi-language informational social media campaigns, hosted virtual community forums, and leveraged the trust of local community health workers otherwise known as “promotoras,” to reach historically underinvested communities.
Now, Newsom’s veto of SB 435 will hamstring our ability to identify gaps in our public health strategies and craft the solutions needed to address the next health crisis on the horizon. Already, we are witnessing lack of availability of the updated COVID-19 vaccine and new barriers to its access.
Without better data collection and disaggregation, we will fall further from the goal of protecting all Californians from another wave of COVID-19.
This is especially significant for Mesoamerican Indigenous communities in California, who are diverse in terms of nation and Indigenous language groups that may have several variants. In Los Angeles County alone, there are at least 17 different Mesoamerican languages spoken, according to a local survey conducted by CIELO, the Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo.
Anecdotally, we know that these populations face intense health disparities — from lack of health coverage, high levels of stress impacting mental health, to employer abuse.
Throughout our work during COVID-19, we too saw up close how Mesoamerican Indigenous communities experienced devastating impacts from the pandemic.
Consistent across the board, these populations had difficulty accessing the most basic information on COVID-19 in their native language. From testing to vaccines, the inability to translate vital public health information in the appropriate indigenous language, meant time lost in the fight against COVID-19.
Aside from the few but powerful nonprofit Indigenous-led organizations doing local independent research, there is no statewide mechanism to capture and synthesize data for this population which is necessary to craft policies and allocate resources that address barriers.
In the coming legislative session, we hope we can revisit this conversation with Gov. Newsom and his administration. Through data equity, we can once again lead the nation in how we recognize, respect, and care for our most vulnerable Californians.
Dr. Seciah Aquino is executive director of the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, California’s leading Latinx health organization.
