COVID-19 and mass incarceration: a call for urgent actionAs of September 23, 2020, the USA had both the highest number of COVID-19 cases and the largest incarcerated population in the world. Approximately 2•3 million people are currently incarcerated in prisons and jails in the USA. More than 6•5 million individuals are under daily correctional supervision, which includes probation and parole, representing 2•6% of the entire US adult population.Due to systemic racism, Black people have been disproportionately affected by mass incarceration and COVID-19. Nearly one-third of Black men will face imprisonment during their lifetime, 1 and Black communities have a markedly higher burden of COVID-19 cases and mortality than White populations. 2 Considering the inextricable link between the health of Black communities and the US criminal legal system, jails and prisons are uniquely positioned to advance health equity and community health, particularly during the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic.Concurrently, the discrimination and criminalisation of additional stigmatised groups-including people who are poor, who use drugs, and those who have mental health disorders-have deepened and reinforced health disparities.Calls for deliberate anti-racist action have been made across the nation following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, and countless others at the hands of police. Police brutality is culturally salient and demands our attention, however, it only represents a small proportion of the damage inflicted by the criminal legal system on Black communities. Stark racial differences in the relative number of police stops, arrests, plea deals, guilty verdicts, and time served are among the most obvious and profound examples of systemic racism in the USA today. Correspondingly, social justice movements to abolish these inequities will be ineffectual without close attention to the racial politics of imprisonment.Jails and prisons have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the USA, more than 40 of the 50 largest clustered outbreaks in the country have occurred in jails and prisons. 3 Compared with the general population, the number of COVID-19 cases is 5•5 times higher among people who are incarcerated. 4 However, racial disparities in testing and case rates remain

Background Managed care programs in the US are becoming a preferred alternative among low-income individuals in the US. Every year during open enrollment, seniors can enroll in Medicare Advantage (MA) or switch MA plans. However, there is very limited information about how seniors obtain information to help them make their choices. While the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare offer online resources that are designed to enable potential beneficiaries to make informed coverage decisions, there is no information as to whether seniors use these resources, and therefore whether these resources are effective compared to other information retrieval methods. Methods The purpose of the present study was to qualitatively explore how seniors obtain information about insurance plans in MA. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 MA beneficiaries from Rhode Island. Results We found that most seniors have strong preferences for obtaining information in-person regarding benefits, cost and other plan information. Some seniors relied heavily on insurance brokers or representatives, and considered the information provided to them without questioning the potential for bias. Others consulted with family and/or friends for guidance, or to compare costs and benefits. Only a few of these seniors used the available internet resources, and in fact most of them mentioned that they did not have a computer/smart device with internet capabilities. However, among those who used and appeared to be comfortable with navigating the internet, www.medicare.gov was not discussed as a useful resource for making decisions regarding health insurance. Conclusions This study suggests that existing online medical resource usage and effects among senior citizens in the United States may need supplementing with in-person communication among influential agents.

Few jurisdictions provide legal protection against discrimination on the basis of weight despite evidence of pervasive inequalities faced by fat individuals in employment, healthcare, education and other domains. Yet, in the last two decades, advocacy efforts in several countries aimed to remedy this situation have been largely unsuccessful. We present a cross-national conceptual analysis of three significant anti-discrimination developments regarding weight in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Iceland, respectively, to highlight how the creation, implementation, and enforcement of legal and policy mechanisms that prohibit weight discrimination ironically suffer Fighting for a (wide enough) seat at the table: Weight stigma in law and policy under the very burden of deeply rooted structural stigmas against fatness and fat bodies that such efforts seek to counter. However, drawing on research around policy change in response to other social movements, we conclude that we may be at a time where broad-ranging policy change could become a reality.