New data and resident stories inform Connecticut’s road map for recovery

A new DataHaven publication, “Towards Health Equity in Connecticut: The Role of Social Inequality and the Impact of COVID-19,” dissects the social factors that have led to such disproportionate health outcomes in the Nutmeg State, which existed long before the pandemic. Our study finds that the COVID-19 outbreak widened those gaps, and suggests a roadmap for helping close them. Looming threats such as mass evictions and a possible second wave of the virus, as well as large-scale demonstrations over systemic racism in policing and other social institutions, suggest that our leaders have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address not just the immediate health crisis, but the underlying social inequalities that complicate it.