The impact of COVID on the Hispanic community [PODCAST]

Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes

“All of our patients, but especially our most vulnerable Spanish-speaking patients, need to hear concrete, meaningful, and practical instructions on how to care for each other when they live in large multi-generational families, and positive stories from people who have successfully managed infection with COVID-19. They need to hear that, as their physicians, we are here for them. I want them to know that when they are sick, their immigration or insurance status is not my concern. My concern and my oath are to the patient in front of me, and to the community I love.”

Susan Lopez is an internal medicine physician.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “The impact of COVID on the Hispanic community.”

Did you enjoy today’s episode?

Please click here to leave a review for The Podcast by KevinMD. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app to get notified when a new episode comes out!

Do you know someone who might enjoy this episode? Share this episode to anyone who wants to hear health care stories filled with information, insight, and inspiration.

Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show, we have Susan Lopez. She’s an internal medicine physician, and she wrote the KevinMD article “The impact of COVID on the Hispanic community.” Susan, welcome to the show.

Susan Lopez: Thank you for having me.

Kevin Pho: So before we get into your article, I was wondering if you could share your story and your journey to where you are today.

Susan Lopez: Yeah. Well, I’m Mexican American, originally from Chicago, actually the Little Village and Cicero area, growing up in these communities all my life. I’ve always wanted to be a physician, and luckily, my family was supportive of that. I have continued to train in the Chicagoland area, which has allowed me to luckily give back to this community.

Kevin Pho: Wonderful. And you’re doing internal medicine in Chicago. How has the pandemic affected you and your practice thus far?

Susan Lopez: Well, I’m a hospitalist at Rush University Medical Center, so early on, I think a lot of us were just very worried about how to prepare for the influx of patients that we were going to see. Definitely from probably early March up until maybe early June, it was pretty much all COVID, all day, every day, taking care of hospitalized patients, and even in the step-down unit. I think the only area I wasn’t exposed to is the ICU. It got to the point where you almost had to remind yourself what a heart attack and everything else looked like, because you just saw so much COVID.

Kevin Pho: So we’re now speaking in the last week of July. How are things now compared to a few months ago?

Susan Lopez: Well, luckily, the numbers in Chicago and the state of Illinois have remained relatively good, and our positivity rate has remained under or at about the 3 percent level for the past week, couple of weeks. So definitely a lot less COVID within the hospital. A lot of people are coming back, especially after waiting for so long at home, so medically much more complicated patients. But we are starting to see that slight uptick of patients coming in with COVID again.

Kevin Pho: So I want to get into your KevinMD article, “The impact of COVID on the Hispanic community.” Can you walk my audience through that article and share the reasons why you decided to write it?

Susan Lopez: Yeah. I think in the thick of it, all of us, again, were just very worried about how to prepare for that surge, to the point that it was one of those things where you just didn’t even realize the makeup of the patient population until you were there. You know, when I work nights in the hospital, usually I can strategize the admissions so that I’m admitting the Spanish-speaking patients. But then it got to be that there was no way I could admit all the Spanish-speaking patients. I had to split it up, and the reason for that was because we couldn’t have in-person translators. So my colleagues would have to either use the phone, or, if we got lucky enough to find an iPad, that seemed to work a little bit better for my colleagues. It was one of those things where all of a sudden, it was just Spanish speakers everywhere, and it just got to a point where it was a little overwhelming.

And I just felt like I didn’t know if that was out there. At that point, there was so much information coming from everywhere about the disparities that the Black communities were facing, and they hadn’t seen too much on the Hispanic and Latinx communities. So I just felt like I needed to put it down in writing and let people know exactly what was happening within the hospitals.

Kevin Pho: So can you share in more detail what some of the specific health obstacles are that the Hispanic community is facing?

Susan Lopez: Well, I think in general, at first, I started to listen to Spanish media just to get in tune with what messages my Spanish-speaking patients were hearing. It was a lot of the same messages: Stay at home, wash your hands. The messaging on universal masking wasn’t as strong back then. But the reality was that when my patients were coming in, or when I was admitting them, one, a lot of them were very fearful that immigration was going to know that they were admitted and was going to know where to find them. The other thing, too, was they just couldn’t stay home. Even though the message was continuing to ask them to stay home, they just couldn’t stay home. They needed to go to work. They were essential workers, you know, driving buses, in our grocery stores, delivering food. So they just didn’t know how to protect themselves despite those messages of staying home.

Kevin Pho: Sure. And from a policy standpoint, if you were in charge of policy, what are some of the ways that we could help the Hispanic community, specifically during the pandemic?

Susan Lopez: I think we really just need to understand, you know, the social determinants of health, the things that are going to affect their behaviors. If you don’t understand those communities, you can’t tailor those messages to the communities. I think they’ve done a good job of letting people know and really emphasizing that universal masking is going to help and it’s going to work. If it were up to me, I think we would continue to provide those very culturally competent messages, probably from the very beginning. I wish that could have been done, but luckily, it’s starting to be done now.

Kevin Pho: Sure. So I’m an internal medicine physician, and I practice in southern New Hampshire, and we do not have a high Hispanic population in my area. So maybe you can teach me: What are some of the things that I should look for behind closed doors whenever I meet a Hispanic patient, especially during the pandemic? What are some of the issues that I need to be aware of?

Susan Lopez: Yeah. I think for most patients, when we ask them to self-isolate at home, they may not understand what isolation means. So it’s really breaking that down: It means trying to not share a room, definitely not sharing a bed, not sharing food. And it’s knowing what the makeup of the household is. A lot of them are going to be multigenerational homes, so if someone does get COVID, if they do live in a multigenerational home, it’s going to be really difficult for them to maintain those six feet of space, or even have that isolated bathroom for that person, or have them stay in one bedroom.

So it’s understanding what the household makeup is and what they understand about those recommendations about isolation, because you can alter some things. Luckily, the City of Chicago does have some options for patients and families who don’t have those options or can’t fulfill those self-isolation practices at home. But really understanding the makeup at home is going to help you give better recommendations to them.

Kevin Pho: And are there any resources that you could share online where we could perhaps learn more about these issues?

Susan Lopez: Well, right now, no. Currently, I’m working with a family medicine practice on actually doing short YouTube videos in English and Spanish, providing resources, specifically at least to the Chicago area, but those will be coming out soon. At least right now, the City of Chicago does have a lot of resources available, and even an application you can download on your phone where you can enter in your COVID symptoms and know what to do. It gives you resources on where to find food, information about help with immigration, and where to find resources even for housing if you need to self-isolate away from family.

Kevin Pho: Sure. We’re talking to Susan Lopez. She’s an internal medicine physician in Chicago. She wrote the KevinMD article “The impact of COVID on the Hispanic community.” Susan, what’s something that you know now that you wish you knew before the pandemic started?

Susan Lopez: I think I wish I would have known how much it was going to impact marginalized communities, and ways to, I guess, you know, we work in internal medicine. Your goal is always to try to prevent disease. So I think, knowing what I know now, I wish I would have known a little bit more about how these communities are receiving messaging. I really had no idea that social media and YouTube were going to play such a big part in disseminating information. I feel like I’ve spent my entire life learning how to, you know, treat patients. It’s a little hard to get that information out there when I don’t know exactly how to do it through those avenues.

Kevin Pho: And my final question: What is your take-home message that you want to share with the KevinMD audience?

Susan Lopez: I had to sum it up in one sentence. I think it’s understanding the community you serve is going to help you better serve that community. Just understanding that community.

Kevin Pho: Well, thank you so much for sharing your insight and time, and thank you for being on the show.

Susan Lopez: Thank you.

Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes