It's not as much during the pandemic; it's what we should also have done before the pandemic. One of the things we didn't do so well was addressing issues related to systemic racism, which contributes to child inequities.
One of the big things we didn't do well before the pandemic was race-based data collection. Before the pandemic, we didn't really know about the disparities in health outcomes related to children. I did a review of the literature and found many studies that had been done on immigrant child health, but oftentimes we did not disaggregate that data by race. We lumped everyone together, and then we expected to find a solution. We know that if we had disaggregated the data and looked at Black people separately, we would have been able to have a much more targeted response to this.
The other thing we didn't do too well, which we started doing much better during the pandemic, is capitalizing and mobilizing opportunities related to health care professionals and health service providers, namely Black and racialized health service providers. That's one thing that has changed during the pandemic.
We now have many more Black organizations that have emerged. It's probably also from the influence of the Black Lives Matter movement. We have, for example, Black Physicians of Canada, the Black Physicians' Association of Alberta, and a Black nurses group.
We need to continue to capitalize on some of the strengths of some of those organizations in order to move some of our approaches and interventions along and positively influence the needs of communities.