Unmasking the Essential Realities of COVID‐19: The Pasifika Community in the Salt Lake Valley

Abstract

Pacific Islanders in diaspora are disproportionately contracting COVID‐19, experience hospitalization and develop complications. In Utah, Pacific Islanders have the highest contraction rate in the state. Pacific Islanders constitute only 2% of the state's population, but represent 4% of the those infected with COVID‐19, begging the question how we might explain the high rates of contraction? As community engaged scholars and practitioners, we offer discussion, insight, and commentary on the COVID‐19 pandemic affecting Pacific Islanders in Utah. Grounding this discussion is a history of the Pacific Islander community as an essential workforce that dates back to the 1850s, before statehood. We argue that historical discrimination against these early Pacific Islanders shaped the way this group is racialized as essential laborers today. The authors offer this assertion along with practices and protocols that honour cultural norms of socialization, which we see is the pathway to provide safe measures that are relevant to the Utah Pasifika community.

Community Resilience and Cultural Responses in Crisis: Lessons Learned from Pacific Islander Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in the USA

“…Among Pacific Islander communities in Salt Lake Valley and greater Utah, many leaders sought to acknowledge the significance of reciprocity in Pacific Islander culture through implementation of culturally responsive COVID-19 response strategies [30]. In Southern California, Pacific Islander community-based and faith-based organizations launched "Wellness Phone Banking" to check in with constituents and determine their needs [31].…”