Author: Neil Schoenherr

As we look toward the post-COVID-19 future, I can only hope that this pandemic will lead to a shift in what we want, expect, and even get from the news. I want to continue to see newscasters we can connect to as real.

Someday we will return to the classroom. In the meantime, the calling of learning continues. Education is a vital endeavor, and we will always do whatever we can with whatever we have.

Trish Kohl and Lora Iannotti, associate professors at Washington University’s Brown School, have received a five-year $3.2 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health to study stunted growth and development in children in Haiti.

As the triple challenges that stem from the COVID-19 crisis unfold — and creates challenges for our safety net programs, nonprofit organizations, and government budgets — we also must remember that those who will suffer the most will be those who can least afford to sustain the burden of the challenge.

The Navajo Nation now has the highest rates of coronavirus infection per capita in the U.S. The people need assistance, says Wynette Whitegoat, assistant director of the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies at Washington University’s Brown School and a member of the Navajo Nation.

America might be approaching a tidal wave of despair and our behavioral health systems cannot adequately prepare without prudent federal legislative action. After all the many congressional legislative phases of economic stimulus relief, behavioral care relief is also needed. Our future depends on the decisions we make today.

So, are you thinking of retiring? Just because you are in your 70s? Michelangelo was just entering the busiest and most creative years of his life. And look what he accomplished 52 years after completing the Sistine Chapel.

Instead of looking at the post-COVID-19 mental health future through a lens of inevitable doom, we can, and should, use this moment as the impetus for the changes that mental health care has always pushed for.

We dismantled homelessness prevention when the stimulus money ran out and HUD priorities shifted toward serving the most vulnerable. Now, we need to think creatively about pooling regional resources for a rapid and robust homelessness prevention system. We did it in the past, and we can do it again.

The PrepareSTL initiative is an example of a successful community-led COVID-19 awareness and education campaign that is effectively engaging the African-American community.