All in this together? – COVID public health measures, diverse communities and practices of care
The Team: Dr Kiran Pienaar, Professor Catherine Bennett, Dr Jaya Keaney, Professor Dean Murphy
COVID-19 has laid bare existing inequalities, highlighting the pressing need for inclusive health responses. As the pandemic unfolds, government leaders frequently remind us that we are ‘all in this together’. Yet despite this emphasis on solidarity, experiences of the pandemic have exposed fault lines of socio-cultural differences, with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities among the most severely impacted. Although Australia’s public health measures typically address the public in universal terms, their implicit understandings of care, ‘essential’ work, and family do not adequately represent the diverse everyday practices of CALD communities. Moreover, Australia’s harshest restrictions have targeted areas with a high proportion of CALD residents, including South-West Sydney and Melbourne’s public housing complexes. The disproportionate impact of COVID measures on such communities threatens the effectiveness of Australia’s epidemic governance, prompting pressing questions for health equity as we look to a future of living with COVID-19.
Combining the interdisciplinary insights of sociology, epidemiology and feminist science studies, this project will explore the racial and cultural politics of Australia’s COVID-19 response. It will focus on the lived experiences of COVID-19 public health measures among CALD communities in public housing, and the findings will inform the development of more equitable health interventions.
Chief Investigator: Dr Kiran Pienaar, Senior Lecturer in Sociology.
Collaborators: Professor Catherine Bennett, Deakin University, Professor and Chair of Epidemiology; Dr Jaya Keaney Research Fellow in Feminist Science Studies at Deakin University/ Monash University; Professor Dean Murphy, research fellow in Public Health at the Kirby Institute, UNSW.