Libertas Senior Medical Educator, Dr. Ben McVane publishes, “I’m a Doctor at the ‘Epicenter of the Epicenter’” in the New York Times.
Dr. McVane’s article explores the challenges the Elmhurst community is facing in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He says, “The people living around Elmhurst Hospital are both vulnerable and neglected: largely immigrants, poor, uninsured and dependent on a public hospital system that is already overstretched and underfunded. Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Corona are the neighborhoods with the highest percentage of foreign-born residents in New York City, coming from seemingly every corner of the world.
These people work jobs that we now acknowledge to be essential — driving cabs, stocking grocery stores, making and delivering food. Many are undocumented immigrants and work off the books or as a part of the gig economy; their jobs don’t offer health insurance, benefits or employment protection. One in five people living in Corona and Elmhurst lives in poverty. Some who are sick or medically at high risk of becoming sick have continued to work because they can’t afford to lose wages or their jobs. These are the circumstances of the often invisible work force that continues to keep New York running now, in skeletal form.”