COVID-19 Impacts to Health and Wellness among Native American, Native Hawaiian, Alaska Native Peoples, and Indigenous Groups throughout the World

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has greatly affected many communities on a global scale. It is well-documented that Indigenous populations are more likely to be disproportionately affected by chronic diseases stemming from health care disparities and lack of access to high-quality education, employment, culturally appropriate healthcare, nutritious food, technology, housing, transportation, and clean water. Lately, assertions have been made that COVID-19 highlights issues amongst Indigenous Peoples in the categories of health service, including public health, technology, society, policy, economy, and even cultural/traditional practices. Efforts to manage and mitigate disease spread magnify the need to more fully address the longstanding inequities in these populations. Indigenous people and communities possess unique languages, culture, environment, socioeconomic, and political status which create distinctive challenges requiring a culturally tailored approach when addressing both the immediate and long-term effects from the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, traditional, cultural and community strengths offer an opportunity for innovative method development informing the public health realm. This important topic seeks to investigate and capture the various negative and positive factors impacting health and wellness for Indigenous people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The goal of this Research Topic is to provide a platform for Indigenous people and allies to discuss issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We intend for these collections of articles to highlight the concerns but also the capacity of Indigenous communities to inform public health globally.
We would like to consider articles that are academically rigorous, yet tell the story of how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected Indigenous: health, society, culture, social media, economy, and policies in urban or rural settings. We will consider papers ranging from mental health to clinical interventions of COVID-19 to social media education. The First Peoples of this land have long been erased from data, media representation, and allocation of limited resources, we hope this body of work gives a voice to the first peoples.

In this Research Topic we encourage all papers that critically present (but not limited to) perspectives, viewpoints, quantitative surveys, qualitative interviews, comments, original research, literature reviews, case reports, case studies, data reports, and innovated approaches that have not yet been systematically tested but have applicability to the scope of this special issue.

***Due to the exceptional nature of the COVID-19 situation, Frontiers is waiving all article publishing charges for COVID-19 related research works.***