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Lack of Information Contributes to Disproportionate COVID-19 Rates Among Oregon Latino Population

by Serafina Smith

The disproportionate effect the coronavirus pandemic has had on Oregon’s Latino community is taking its toll. And the strain is not confined to those infected. Community health workers, doctors, and others in the community have been bottlenecked into a front-line of Spanish-language and culturally-appropriate aid to those affected by the virus, who often do not know how to access help in the predominantly white, English-speaking state. “It’s just really overwhelming,” said Anakaren Gutierrez Sandoval, a community health worker with the non-profit group Oregon Latino Health Coalition. “That’s the best way I can describe it. Everyone is just at max capacity.”

While they make up about 13% of the population of Oregon, Latino Oregonians account for over 39% of coronavirus infections in the state. Several factors contribute to this – such as crowded housing, an overrepresentation of Latinos as essential workers, and lack of access to healthcare – but a leading consideration is the lack of information available to the community. While information on social distancing and mask-wearing seems to abound for English-speakers, resources in Spanish can be scarce.

“We have a 211 number where they could call to request assistance,” said Sandoval, “but a lot of times that was in English or they had technical difficulties being able to get that information.” Not only are Spanish-language resources hard to come by, misinformation on Spanish radio stations is plentiful. This lack of communication appears to have exacerbated or at least contributed to the disproportionate infection of the Latino community in Oregon.

“We’re in the middle of a pandemic,” said Mexican-American winemaker Cristina Gonzales, “But we’re also in a pandemic of misinformation. And that goes down the pipeline, down to our most disadvantaged and underrepresented groups.”

In the below graph, the blue bar represents the number of COVID-19 cases among people who identified as Hispanic. While it is clear that these represent much more than 13% of the population, the data has been obscured in some ways by the differentiation between race and ethnicity.

In this second graph, the “LatinX” community appears to have suffered zero cases, but that is false.This discrepancy appears because most people mark “white” (or another race) as their race, and identify themselves using the Hispanic ethnicity box. Evaluating race data alone could lead to an inaccurate analysis of the pandemic’s effect on the Latino community in Oregon.

This data shows the reality that Oregon’s Latino community, especially in the agricultural sector, has suffered disproportionately from COVID-19. Most of Oregon’s agricultural workers – especially in industries such as wineries Christmas tree farming in the Willamette Valley – are Latino, many of them migrant workers. For agricultural workers, losing two weeks of pay can be disastrous financially, and government aid such as employment benefits is not always available, either because of immigration status or a language barrier in accessing it. These workers rely on their employers to survive — but many of them  aren’t doing enough to allow workers to take enough time off, or even let them know if those opportunities exist.

Working from home is simply not an option for agricultural and service workers, who make up a majority of the Latino population. For students and white collar workers, work-from-home opportunities are also often limited by a lack of reliable internet access. This dearth of technology, as well as the language barrier, mean that reliable news media is scarce. Many families rely on word of mouth, news from their home countries, (which can include misinformation or health advice that differs significantly from US standards), and accurate signage and resources at the place of employment.

And employers aren’t always equipped properly to meet the needs of the community. Gonzales, whose vineyard is located just outside of Portland in the Willamette Valley, said even when employers are well-intentioned, overwhelm and the financial stresses of the pandemic can affect how resources are distributed. “You see the public health care signs of, you know, let’s be safe during COVID,” she said, “And they have them that are bilingual and in different languages. But some of it is that the employers themselves might not know how to get it. Or it’s just not being posted to where workers are able to see it. And then there’s illiteracy, where workers are potentially not able to read if it’s in English or if it’s in Spanish.”

Another problem is trust. Even when translated into Spanish and made available, many Latino people may be wary of official sources. “There’s a lot of mistrust of the government,” said Dr. Roberto Orellana, a professor in the School of Community Health at Portland State University. “No matter if it’s local government or federal government, for a lot of people, government is government. And when the government put your kids in cages, you don’t trust the government.”

Orellana also underscored the importance of word-of-mouth and messages from community organizations, such as Latino churches or family members, to help get the right information across. “The message has to come from the government,” he said, “but also from … local organizations.”

Gonzales, in addition to being very active in the Latino wine-making community, is on the board of the non-profit AHIVOY, (Asociación Hispana de la Industria del Vino en Oregon y Comunidad). AHIVOY provides education to vineyard workers (called “vineyard stewards”) in order to help them overcome socioeconomic barriers and access other careers within the wine industry, such as sales, working in tasting rooms, marketing, and even becoming winemakers themselves. Through partnerships with local community colleges, AHIVOY helps vineyard stewards, who might start out as migrant workers, gain an immersive English-language experience as well as knowledge and resources to start fulfilling careers. However, Gonzales said the pandemic has put a halt to all of that. When the community college closed their campus and moved classes online in the spring, AHIVOY had to temporarily cancel its program.

“Vineyard stewards don’t have access to the internet all the time,” said Gonzales, “So that would make if very difficult to run classes.” In-person resources are a necessary part of catering to lower-income students. Gonzales said she hoped the program would be revamped in 2021, with smaller class sizes.

Shutting down schools or moving to remote learning has been a unique challenge for the Latino community. Beyond the impact on children, who may not have access to the internet for online classes, it often means a disruption in the information pipeline for migrant parents. Monolingual Spanish-speaking parents often rely on information passed through their often English-speaking school children for updates on important news and events in the community. Orellana emphasized that it is vital for schools to “continue to provide evidence-based information to the students so they can take it into the family.”

Despite the information blackout in many Spanish-speaking households, the Oregon Latino Health Coalition has been trying its best to assist those affected by the virus — and Sandoval said it hasn’t been easy. The organization aims to help the Hispanic community in Multnomah County, especially those in the agricultural industries surrounding Portland, access otherwise hard-to-reach resources. They provide Spanish-language help with filling out applications for aid and healthcare. But Sandoval said that even in 2020, when much of life seems to have moved online, the group relies most heavily on word of mouth to get information to their clients. For a recent drive-through COVID testing event, Sandoval said, “Most of the patients that signed up for it, it was through word of mouth. When we would try to do it on social media, it wasn’t effective.”

Without adequate resources and information available to the Latino community, Sandoval also said that migrant workers fear giving the necessary personal information for contact tracing to county and state officials. They are afraid it might be given to ICE and lead to deportation.

“We saw a lot of clients hesitant to accept any sort of financial aid or resources, because they felt like it could affect their immigration status,” she said. Even though the county does not report any of the information it collects to ICE, Sandoval said people are hesitant to trust officials, and don’t want to disclose information such as the other members of their household. This has led to hesitance in the community to get tested, as a positive test is associated with having to disclose this vital information to the authorities.

Many involved in outreach in the Latino community said that because resources and staff are scarce, it has led to extreme overwhelm among those trying to help. “Everyone is like a deer in the headlights right now,” said Gonzales. “We’ve been in the pandemic for a little while, but still, it’s so much to take in and process. And, you know, to try to survive.”

Because so much of Oregon’s Spanish-speaking population is currently employed in the agricultural and service sectors, there are too few Latino nurses, community health workers, and Spanish-speaking government employees to address the crisis. “When the vaccine comes,” said Orellana, “we want to have this large workforce of trained Latinos, who are bicultural and bilingual, that can help our agencies, the state and community health centers.”

Sandoval echoed the call. “We’re all feeling like there just need to be more resources available,” she said. “Because until people can feel like they can stay home, and take care of themselves, protect themselves, without losing their jobs or their homes, the numbers are still going to continue to increase.”

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Lack of Information Contributes to Disproportionate COVID-19 Rates Among Oregon Latino Population

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Serafina’s Revised Draft

Lack of Information Contributes to Disproportionate COVID-19 Rates Among Oregon Latino Population

“It’s just really overwhelming,” said Anakaren Gutierrez Sandoval, a community health worker with the non-profit group Oregon Latino Health Coalition. “That’s the best way I can describe it. Everyone is just at max capacity.”

Sandoval is talking about the disproportionate affect that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the Latino community in Oregon. While they make up about 12% of the population of Oregon, Latino Oregonians account for over 39% of coronavirus infections in the state. Several factors contribute to this – such as crowded housing, an overrepresentation of Latinos as essential workers, and lack of access to healthcare – but a leading consideration is the lack of information available to the community. While information on social distancing and mask-wearing seems to abound for English-speakers, resources in Spanish can be scarce.

“We have a 211 number where they could call to request assistance,” said Sandoval, “but a lot of times that was in English or they had technical difficulties being able to get that information.” Not only are Spanish-language resources hard to come by, misinformation on Spanish-language radio stations is plentiful. This lack of communication appears to have exacerbated or at least contributed to the disproportionate infection of the Latino community in Oregon.

“We’re in the middle of a pandemic,” said Mexican-American winemaker Cristina Gonzales, “But we’re also in a pandemic of misinformation. And that goes down the pipeline, down to our most disadvantaged and underrepresented groups.”

In the below graph, the blue bars represent positive tests of people who marked their ethnicity as Hispanic. While it is clear that these represent much more than 12% of the population, the data has been obscured in some ways by the differentiation between race and ethnicity.

In this second graph, the “LatinX” community appears to have suffered zero cases – this is because most people mark “white” (or another race) as their race, and identify themselves using the Hispanic ethnicity box. This data could lead to an inaccurate analysis of the pandemic’s effect on the Latino community in Oregon.

This data shows the reality that Oregon’s Latino community, especially in the agricultural sector, has suffered disproportionately from the COVID-19. Most of Oregon’s agricultural workers – especially in industries such as the wineries and Christmas tree farming in the Willamette Valley – are Latino, many of them migrant workers. Since low-income housing can be hard to find, families crowd into small apartments, sometimes with two or three families in one two-bedroom apartment in the Portland area. This makes social distancing near impossible. For agricultural workers, losing two weeks of pay can be disastrous financially, and many employers aren’t doing enough to allow workers to take enough time off, or even let them know if those opportunities exist.
But working from home is impossible for agricultural and service workers, who make up a majority of the Latino population. For those who are students or who do work in other fields, at-home work can also be inaccessible due to a lack of reliable access to the internet. This dearth of technology, as well as the language barrier, mean that reliable news media is scarce. Many families rely on word of mouth, news from their home countries, (which can include misinformation or health advice that differs significantly from US standards), and accurate signage and resources at the place of employment.

And employers aren’t always equipped properly to meet the needs of the community. Gonzales, whose vineyard is located just outside of Portland in the Willamette Valley, said even when employers are well-intentioned, overwhelm and the financial stresses of the pandemic can affect how resources are distributed. “You see the public health care signs of, you know, let’s be safe during COVID,” she said, “And they have them that are bilingual and in different languages. But some of it is that the employers themselves might not know how to get it. Or it’s just not being posted to where workers are able to see it. And then there’s illiteracy, where workers are potentially not able to read if it’s in English or if it’s in Spanish.”

Another problem is trust. Even when translated into Spanish and made available, many Latino people may be wary of official sources. “There’s a lot of mistrust of the government,” said Dr. Roberto Orellana, a professor in the School of Community Health at Portland State University. “No matter if it’s local government or federal government, for a lot of people, government is government. And when the government put your kids in cages, you don’t trust the government.”

Orellana also underscored the importance of word-of-mouth and messages from community organizations, such as Latino churches or family members, to help get the right information across. “The message has to come from the government,” he said, “but also from … local organizations.”

Gonzales, in addition to being very active in the Latino wine-making community, is on the board of the non-profit AHIVOY, (Asociación Hispana de la Industria del Vino en Oregon y Comunidad). AHIVOY provides education to vineyard workers (called “vineyard stewards”) in order to help them overcome socioeconomic barriers and access other careers within the wine industry, such as sales, working in tasting rooms, marketing, and even becoming winemakers themselves. Through partnerships with local community colleges, AHIVOY has helped vineyard stewards, who might have started out as migrant workers, gain an immersive English-language experience as well as knowledge and resources to start fulfilling careers. However, Gonzales said the pandemic has put a halt to all of that. When the community college closed their campus and moved classes online in the spring, AHIVOY had to temporarily cancel its program.

“Vineyard stewards don’t have access to the internet all the time,” said Gonzales, “So that would make if very difficult to run classes.” In-person resources are a necessary part of catering to lower-income students. Gonzales said she hoped the program would be revamped in 2021, with smaller class sizes.

Shutting down schools or moving to remote learning has been a challenge for the Latino community, both for children who may not have access to the internet for online classes, and for parents who rely on the information pipeline passed through their often English-speaking children. Orellana emphasized that it is vital for schools to “continue to provide evidence-based information to the students so they can take it into the family.”

Sandoval said this information blackout has meant that getting the help her organization offers to Latino workers has been difficult. The Oregon Latino Health Coalition aims to help the Hispanic community in Multnomah County, especially those in the agricultural industries surrounding Portland, access otherwise hard-to-reach resources. They provide Spanish-language help with filling out applications for aid and healthcare. But Sandoval said that even in 2020, when much of life seems to have moved online, the group relies most heavily on word of mouth to get information to their clients. For a recent drive-through COVID testing event, Sandoval said, “Most of the patients that signed up for it, it was through word of mouth. When we would try to do it on social media, it wasn’t effective.”

Without adequate resources and information available to the Latino community, Sandoval also said that migrant workers fear giving the necessary personal information for contact tracing to county and state officials. They are afraid it might be given to ICE and lead to deportation.

“We saw a lot of clients hesitant to accept any sort of financial aid or resources, because they felt like it could affect their immigration status,” she said. Even though the county does not report any of the information it collects to ICE, Sandoval said people are hesitant to trust officials, and don’t want to disclose information such as the other members of their household. This has led to hesitance in the community to get tested, as a positive test is associated with having to disclose this vital information to the authorities.

Many involved in community outreach in the Latino community said that because resources and staff are scarce, it has led to extreme overwhelm among those trying to help. “Everyone is like a deer in the headlights right now,” said Gonzales. “We’ve been in the pandemic for a little while, but still, it’s so much to take in and process. And, you know, to try to survive.”

Because so much of Oregon’s Spanish-speaking population is currently employed in the agricultural and service sectors, there are too few Latino nurses, community health workers, and Spanish-speaking government employees to address the crisis. “When the vaccine comes,” said Orellana, “we want to have this large workforce of trained Latinos, who are bicultural and bilingual, that can help our agencies, the state and community health centers.”

Sandoval echoed the call. “We’re all feeling like there just need to be more resources available,” she said. “Because until people can feel like they can stay home, and take care of themselves, protect themselves, without losing their jobs or their homes, the numbers are still going to continue to increase.”

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Serafina’s Story Draft

Lack of Information Contributes to Disproportionate COVID-19 Rates Among Oregon Latino Population 

“It’s just really overwhelming,” said Anakaren Gutierrez Sandoval, a community health worker with the non-profit group Oregon Latino Health Coalition. “That’s the best way I can describe it. Everyone is just at max capacity.”

Sandoval is talking about the disproportionate affect that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on Hispanic and Latino communities in Oregon. While these groups make up about 12% of the population of Oregon, they account for over 39% of coronavirus infections in the state. Several factors contribute to this – such as crowded housing, an overrepresentation of Latinos as essential workers, and lack of access to healthcare – but a leading consideration is the lack of information available to the Hispanic community. While information on social distancing and mask-wearing seems to abound for English-speakers, resources in Spanish can be scarce.

“We have a 211 number where they could call to request assistance,” said Sandoval, “but a lot of times that was in English or they had technical difficulties being able to get that information.” Not only are Spanish-language resources hard to come by, misinformation on Spanish-language radio stations is plentiful. This lack of communication appears to have exacerbated or at least contributed to the disproportionate infection of the Hispanic community in Oregon.

“We’re in the middle of a pandemic,” said Mexican-American winemaker Cristina Gonzales, “But we’re also in a pandemic of misinformation. And that goes down the pipeline, down to our most disadvantaged and underrepresented groups. [They’re] not getting information or the correct information at all.”

In the below graph, the blue bars represent positive tests of people who marked their ethnicity as Hispanic. While it is clear that these represent much more than 12% of the population, the data has been obscured in some ways by the differentiation between race and ethnicity.

In this second graph, the “LatinX” community appears to have suffered zero cases – this is because most people mark “white” (or another race) as their race, and identify themselves using the Hispanic ethnicity box. This data could lead to an inaccurate analysis of the pandemic’s affect on the Latino community in Oregon.

This data shows the reality that Oregon’s Hispanic community, especially in the agricultural sector, has suffered disproportionately from the COVID-19. Most of Oregon’s agricultural workers – especially in industries such as the wineries and Christmas tree farming in the Willamette Valley – are Latino, many of them migrant workers. Since low-income housing can be hard to find, families crowd into small apartments, sometimes with two or three families in one two-bedroom apartment in the Portland area. This makes social distancing near impossible, and without reliable access to the internet or accurate Spanish-language media, sometimes families don’t even know how they should be properly distancing and quarantining, even if they could. For agricultural workers, losing two weeks of pay can be disastrous financially, and many employers aren’t doing enough to allow workers to take enough time off, or even let them know if those opportunities exist.

Gonzales, whose vineyard, Gonzales Wine Company, is located just outside of Portland in the Willamette Valley, said sometimes even when employers and are well-intentioned, overwhelm and the financial stresses of the pandemic can affect how resources are distributed. “You see the public health care signs of, you know, let’s be safe during COVID,” she said, “And they have them that are bilingual and in different languages. But some of it is that the employers themselves might not know how to get it. Or it’s just not being posted to where workers are able to see it. And then there’s illiteracy, where workers are potentially not able to read if it’s in English or if it’s in Spanish.”

Gonzales, in addition to being very active in the Latino wine-making community, is on the board of the non-profit AHIVOY, (Asociación Hispana de la Industria del Vino en Oregon y Comunidad). AHIVOY provides education to vineyard workers (called “vineyard stewards”) in order to help them overcome socioeconomic barriers and access other careers within the wine industry, such as sales, working in tasting rooms, marketing, and even becoming winemakers themselves. Through partnerships with local community colleges, AHIVOY has helped vineyard stewards, who might have started out as migrant workers, gain an immersive English-language experience as well as knowledge and resources to start fulfilling careers. However, Gonzales said the pandemic has put a halt to all of that. When the community college closed their campus and moved classes online in the spring, AHIVOY had to temporarily cancel its program.

“Vineyard stewards don’t have access to the internet all the time,” said Gonzales, “So that would make if very difficult to run classes.” In-person resources are a necessary part of catering to lower-income students. Gonzales said she hoped the program would be revamped in 2021, with smaller class sizes. This is another example of how lack of internet access has harmed the Latino community’s ability to access resources that might help them navigate the pandemic, and even life after it.

Sandoval said this information blackout has meant that getting the help her organization offers to Latino workers has been difficult. The Oregon Latino Health Coalition aims to help the Hispanic community in Multnomah County, especially those in the agricultural industries surrounding Portland, access otherwise hard-to-reach resources. They provide Spanish-language help with filling out applications for aid and healthcare. But Sandoval said that even in 2020, when much of life seems to have moved online, the group relies most heavily on word of mouth to get information to their clients. For a recent drive-through COVID testing event, Sandoval said, “Most of the patients that signed up for it, it was through word of mouth. When we would try to do it on social media, it wasn’t effective.”

Without adequate resources and information available to the Latino community, Sandoval also said that migrant workers fear giving the necessary personal information for contact tracing to county and state officials. They are afraid it might be given to ICE and lead to deportation.

“We saw a lot of clients hesitant to accept any sort of financial aid or resources, because they felt like it could affect their immigration status,” she said.  Even though the county does not report any of the information it collects to ICE, Sandoval said people are hesitant to trust officials, and don’t want to disclose information such as the other members of their household. This has led to hesitance in the community to get tested, as a positive test is associated with having to disclose this vital information to the authorities.

Both Sandoval and Gonzales said the situation has led to extreme overwhelm among those trying to help. “Everyone is like a deer in the headlights right now,” said Gonzales. “We’ve been in the pandemic for a little while, but still, it’s so much to take in and process. And, you know, to try to survive.”

“We’re all feeling like there just need to be more resources available,” said Sandoval. “Because until people can feel like they can stay home, and take care of themselves, protect themselves, without losing their jobs or their homes, the numbers are still going to continue to increase.”

 

 

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Serafina Smith Revised Pitch

Tracking Race Over Time in Hawaii

In this graph of Covid cases in Hawaii over time, two things are immediately visible: Hawaii experienced a major spike in cases in late July/August, and that for the majority of those cases, the race of patients is unknown. In this story, I will investigate the missing data. A story by the nonprofit news site Honolulu Civil Beat speculated that this lack of data is caused by overwhelmed investigators during this surge. I will investigate how this could have happened, and why they haven’t been able to catch up despite a plateau in the number of “unknown” and total cases around the end of September.

Hawaii ranks as the most racially diverse state in the US, and its racial makeup is much different than the mainland. It is the only state where white people make up less than a plurality of the population, and almost a quarter (24%) of Hawaiians are multiracial. In the Covid data where race was collected, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders make up a disproportionately large number of Hawaii’s covid cases. In this story I will investigate if the “unknown” cases also account for a spike in the proportion of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander cases, or if perhaps another racial group has been underreported.

I have contacted and am waiting to hear back about interviews with several sources. My plan is to investigate the chain of custody for this data from the hospital to when it is reported on the state’s website, and therefore included in the CTP data. I am working on speaking with one of the major hospitals, such as The Queen’s Medical Center or the Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women and Children, to learn me more about how they keep track of data and report it to the state. I have also contacted Janice Obuko, the public information officer for the Hawaii Department of Health, who I hope will be able to tell me more about how covid race data is reported to the state agency. I have also contacted the Hawaii Data Collaborative, a group which compiles state-level data on several topics, for more context about how data is collected in Hawaii and hopefully local knowledge about who to talk to to find this missing data. I am also hoping to find an epidemiologist and/or data scientist with the Hawaii Department of Health.

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Serafina’s Data Sketch 3

“Unknown” Race Cases in Hawaii on the Rise

In this graph of Covid cases in Hawaii over time, two things are immediately visible:  Hawaii experienced a major spike in cases among all race in late July/August, and that for the majority of those cases, the race of patients is unknown. As we have learned, data is not necessarily objective — it is created by the people who gather, enter, and analyze it. It would be interesting to investigate what happened in Hawaii in August that led to race data being ignored or not collected.

In the data where race is collected, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders make up a disproportionately large number of Hawaii’s covid cases. Native Hawaiian activists are now pushing the state to release the remaining race data, to determine what happened and if the trend continues. An interesting story idea would be to delve into this breakdown of reporting and find out what happened here. It might also be interesting to look into the major hospitals and see how they report this data, and how a major spike in cases would have overwhelmed the system to this degree.

Sources:

  • Hawaii Dept. of Health epidemiologists
  • Hawaii covid contract tracing investigators
  • Staff at Hawaii hospitals who enter and work with covid data
  • Activists with the group We Are Oceania, who are funding a helpline for Native Hawaiians

Length: 800-1200 words

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Serafina’s Data Sketch 2

Native Hawaiian Covid Cases & Mass Incarceration

In Hawaii, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders have been hit the hardest by the coronavirus pandemic. Although it is clear that the largest population of Native Hawaiians live in this state, they have been affected disproportionately to their share of the population. According to a study from the University of Hawaii, several risk factors among this population contribute to their disproportionate infection rate. These include overrepresentation as “essential workers” in industries such as the military, security, customer service and healthcare; high rates of chronic disease; high rates of smoking and vaping; lower overall economic status, and overrepresentation in the homeless and incarcerated population.

An interesting story idea would be to examine the affect of mass incarceration of Hawaiians on their Covid rates. In the lower 48, both mass incarceration and disproportionate coronavirus infections affect the Black population at scale. In Hawaii, the same thing appears to be happening with the NHPI population. While roughly 21% of Hawaii’s population identifies as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, this group makes up 40-60% of its incarcerated population. Additionally, most of Hawaii’s incarcerated people are imprisoned outside of the state — and most of these people are Native Hawaiian. This can create both an illusion of fewer Native Hawaiians imprisoned in the state of Hawaii and a disproportionately high number in other states — particularly in Arizona, where two private prisons for Hawaiian inmates are located.

Source ideas:

  • Keaweʻaimoku Kaholokula, professor and chair of the department Native Hawaiian Health at the University of Hawaii Manoa
  • Families of incarcerated Native Hawaiians
  • Hawaii Dept. of Health epidemiologists

Length: depending on sources and their availability, 1000-1500 words

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Serafina’s Data Sketch 1

Covid & Ethnicity in Oregon

Covid in Oregon seems to have disproportionately affected people of Hispanic heritage. Hispanic people make up the largest minority group in the state, but still only account for roughly 12% of the total population of majority-white Oregon. However, they account for nearly 37% of Covid cases.

One factor that could explain this discrepancy is the higher likelihood that Hispanics hold customer service jobs, or other jobs where they are not able to work remotely and must interface with people on a daily basis. Some of Oregon’s main industries include wineries, farms, and the Nike factory where many Hispanic people work. One story idea would be looking into those communities to see how Covid has affected them — perhaps at a specific winery or the Nike factory where many people work and have been infected.

Source ideas:

  • People of Hispanic heritage who were infected with the virus in Oregon
  • Owners/managers of employers in Oregon that employ mostly Hispanic staff
  • Oregon Dept. of Health epidemiologists

Length: depending on sources and availability, 1000-1500 words

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Serafina’s COVID Tracking Reflection

During my shift volunteering for the COVID Tracking Project, I entered data for Oregon, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Texas. I was glad the focus was on quality, not speed, as it took me a while to enter each value super carefully and make sure I was pulling from the right place. Once I got started, however, I noticed that I was able to get “in the zone” and the I was surprised how quickly the time passed.

As I was completing each box, I was very impressed with the quality of the instructions. The CTP team really went all nine yards to make sure new volunteers have a clear path to finding data that is sometimes nearly impossible to find on complicated and sometimes hidden web pages. I can only imagine how much work it must have taken to get this project off the ground and find where each data point (for all 50 states and additional territories!) was located among hundreds of web pages, PDF’s, spreadsheets, and even social media accounts.

I was also glad to be part of a team that worked together really well. When I couldn’t find the value for a particular data point for Oregon, the team was very helpful in answering my questions in Slack.  Overall, I was impressed by the work put in to make sure this colossal project runs so smoothly!

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Serafina Smith’s Tableau Visualization