Howard Dana, Turner Abigail Norris, Nemeth Julianna, Padamsee Tasleem J
Department of Biomedical Education and Anatomy, Center for Bioethics, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, United States.
Department of Philosophy, College of Arts and Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States.
Front Public Health. 2025 Mar 6;13:1542587. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1542587. eCollection 2025.
US public health response to COVID-19 has focused on increasing availability and access to viral testing, which raises three sets of potential problems: (1) lack of testing uptake, (2) diminished public health impact of testing, and (3) loss of access to necessary social goods and supports. Moreover, these problems are encountered in affluent vs. disadvantaged communities. If not addressed, these problems could exacerbate health disparities via the public health strategies that aim to lower the population-level impact of COVID. These problems also risk undermining trust in public health interventions more broadly and pose challenges to the sustainability of testing programs moving forward. In this perspective essay, we argue that public health research must aim to document and understand the mechanisms through which living in structurally disadvantaged environments exacerbates not only the logistical and material burdens of COVID-19 testing, but also the ethical and social burdens it creates. Such research will facilitate development of targeted interventions that empower people to make the testing-related decisions that best serve both their own interests and those of their broader communities.
美国对新冠疫情的公共卫生应对措施侧重于增加病毒检测的可及性和可获取性，这引发了三组潜在问题：（1）检测参与度不足；（2）检测对公共卫生的影响减弱；（3）失去获得必要社会福利和支持的机会。此外，富裕社区和弱势社区都存在这些问题。如果不加以解决，这些问题可能会通过旨在降低新冠疫情对人群层面影响的公共卫生策略加剧健康差距。这些问题还可能更广泛地破坏对公共卫生干预措施的信任，并给未来检测项目的可持续性带来挑战。在这篇观点文章中，我们认为公共卫生研究必须致力于记录和理解生活在结构上处于不利地位的环境中不仅会加剧新冠病毒检测的后勤和物质负担，还会加剧其造成的伦理和社会负担的机制。这样的研究将有助于制定有针对性的干预措施，使人们能够做出最符合自身利益及其更广泛社区利益的与检测相关的决策。
