As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, more African Americans than whites are falling ill and dying from the virus and more are losing livelihoods from the accompanying recession. The virus thereby exploits structural disadvantages, rooted partly in historical and contemporary anti-Black sentiments, working against African Americans. These include higher rates of comorbid illness and more limited health care access, higher rates of disadvantageous labor market positioning and community and housing conditions, greater exposure to long-term care residence, and higher incarceration rates. COVID-19 also exposes African Americans' greater vulnerability to recession, and possibly greater susceptibility to accompanying behavioral health problems. If they are left unaddressed, the very vulnerabilities COVID-19 exploits may perpetuate themselves. However, continuing and supplementing health and economic COVID mitigation policies can disproportionately benefit African Americans and reduce short-and long-term adverse effects. The greater impact of COVID-19 on African Americans demonstrates the consequences of pervasive social and economic inequality and marks this as a critical time to prevent further compounding of adverse effects. Keywords African American health disparities. COVID-19. African American economic disparities. Policy

The Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion increased coverage especially for the “undeserving poor”—nondisabled, nonelderly adults, who disproportionately are African American. However, African Americans benefited comparably less than other groups from Medicaid expansion because they disproportionately reside in states that rejected Medicaid expansion. Psychological and other social science research establishes that disapproval of providing “welfare” to “undeserving poor” is closely aligned with racial bias, and that these sentiments partly motivate public disapproval of policies such as Medicaid for nondisabled, nonelderly adults. It is important to clarify and acknowledge this barrier for a realistic perspective on obstacles to keeping and expanding Medicaid coverage.

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Human service organizations seeking to infuse research and other forms of evidence into their programs often need to expand their knowledge sharing systems in order to build their absorptive capacities for new information. To promote their engagement in evidence-informed practice, human service organizations can benefit from connections with intermediary organizations that assist with the dissemination and utilization of research and the use of internal knowledge brokers, called link officers. These boundaryspanning individuals work to embed external research and internal evidence in order to address current organizational priorities and service demands. This exploratory study describes the characteristics, major activities, and perceptions of link officers connected with three pioneering intermediary organizations. Quantitative and qualitative data from a survey of 137 Canadian and UK link officers provide a profile of these professionals, including how they engage practitioners to promote evidence-informed practice and the degree to which they are supported within their organizations and by intermediary organizations. The article concludes with practice and research implications for the development of the link officer role in human service organizations.