When you read about the numbers of people dying of COVID-19, the inequalities in meeting basic needs, or the reasons why children die more often in poorer countries, it is normal to feel overwhelmed by the depth and breadth of the social problems of health.

At the same time, our collective response to COVID-19 is highlighting our interdependence, and the ability of each of us to create change. Even before COVID-19, health professionals were highlighting how health for all requires acknowledging our interdependence. For example, in the article “The power of interdependence,” the authors write that connecting people, providers, and systems is essential:

Promoting optimal health outcomes for diverse patients and populations requires the acknowledgment and strengthening of interdependent relationships between health professions, education programs, health systems, and the communities they serve. (Van Eck et al. 2021)

Researchers have already started looking at understanding the spread, treatment and eventual recovery from COVID-19 can help us get better at solving social problems worldwide. In the article “System Thinking in COVID-19 recovery,” the authors point out first that COVID-19 is targeting our most vulnerable people:

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have been experienced differently globally, regionally, and within countries. Rather than equalizing societies, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities on an unprecedented scale. The effect of the pandemic on vulnerable people is already, and will continue to be, devastating, especially in regions with particularly challenging economic landscapes, such as in Latin America, which has the highest levels of inequalities globally, and in sub-Saharan Africa, which has the highest levels of poverty. The U.N. stated that just 25 weeks of the pandemic derailed 25 years of human development. (Omukuti 2021)

They further argue that women and girls are disproportionately impacted:

Lockdowns have led to increases in domestic violence and femicide and although all women are at risk of gender-based violence, women of poorer backgrounds have less resources to flee violent homes, whereas women who are older, disabled, migrant, Indigenous, Black, or minority ethnic are less likely to have access to protection services or obtain justice. Social distancing measures have put more women and girls out of paid work and education in comparison to their male counterparts due to gendered factors, such as prioritizing boys’ education or forcing girls into child or early marriages. (Omukuti 2021)

Unexpectedly though, the authors do not argue for public health interventions. The first strategy that they propose is reducing the debt loads of lower-income countries so that more of the money can go to public health and infrastructure projects. The intricate interconnections of money and power connect countries together. By changing the accessibility of money, the authors argue, the circumstances of women and girls during the pandemic can be improved long term.

Closer to home, we see how individual agency and collective action can give us hope. In another bit of good news, some young people across the country are using their tech-savvy skills to help older people get Covid vaccines, which can be difficult to schedule and require a certain amount of tech savviness. 12-year-old Samuel Kuesch, a video game lover, has helped over 1200 older Americans get COVID vaccine appointments (Herzog 2021). His project expanded to his extended family, and teens and preteens in his family are now all pitching in to give older Americans a “shot at the shot.”. Other examples abound of neighbors taking food to quarantine friends, food kitchens adding staff to provide more boxed meals and delivery to people who couldn’t leave home, and school art studios using 3-D printers to create PPE for understaffed hospital workers. Each individual action supported the collective good, improving health for all of us.