Developing an Emergency Sociotechnical Infrastructure with Lexington's Latinx Community-collaboration between Colleges of Communication and Nursing (RPA Pilot / Seed Project)

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted the Latinx population in the United States, with significantly higher rates of spread and related illness. While health inequities in Latinx communities are well-established, underlying social and structural determinants are rarely addressed to reduce them. This deficit negatively impacted their ability to coordinate effective COVID-19 response efforts. Thus, in this project we will develop an Alternative Sociotechnical Infrastructures (ASIs) prototype for the local Latinx community. Usually, initiatives to address inequities fail because they are designed from the top-down without input from the target community; this project, however, is guided by principles of participatory action research (PAR) and employs a bottom-up approach. We bring together a multidisciplinary team of researchers from ICTs, Nursing, Hispanic Studies, and Justice Education. We also enrolled as partners the Lexington's Latinx community, civil organizations, and the local government, all of whom are highly enthusiastic about participating.