By Briana Philemy
Mayor Eric Adams has appointed CUNY Chancellor Félix V Matos Rodriguez to his newly created Covid-19 Recovery Roundtable Health and Equity Taskforce. The group is made up of 40-plus stakeholders from diverse sectors and backgrounds.
“I am pleased to serve on Mayor Adam’s COVID-19 Recovery Roundtable and Health Equity Task Force, representing CUNY’s community of nearly 300,000 students, staff and faculty in 25 campuses and offices throughout the five boroughs and help his administration chart a prosperous and more equitable future for our beloved City,” Rodriguez said in an email to The Queens Chronicle.
The Chronicle article stated that the mayor and his committee’s focus would be on New York’s health and economic recovery.
They will meet every month for the next year to develop a more robust and healthier New York City.
“We cannot build a just and prosperous recovery for all New Yorkers without bringing together and listening to experts and community leaders from across the city,” the mayor is quoted as saying in the Chronicle article.
The members of the roundtable are from various industries. These include healthcare and community associations, religious organizations and tech and communication companies.
In addition to the steady transition of a “new normal” being displayed, this initiative grants leaders the opportunity to reconsider public health infrastructures in various sectors of activities, including restoration, entertainment and tourism.
It will also highlight the effects of an inequitable repartition of health resources on the low-income, vulnerable and disadvantaged- yet part of the active working population- on the growth and development of NYC. These longer-term equity goals set to be established by the task force will manage and promise to mitigate disparities in public health and services further.
For the past two years, our community has sought a sense of normalcy. New Yorkers have been doing their best to retrieve whatever life there was before face masks, mass immunization and social distancing were required. Data from The New York Times shows that there has been a decrease in infection rates.
But there is still a need to address lasting policies that impact New Yorkers’ access to health and relief resources in general.
