Sentinel Communities Insights—Impacts of COVID-19 and Pandemic Response on Children and Families: Mobile, Alabama
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Report Publish Date: March 2021
This report examines decisions that officials in Mobile, Ala., made during the pandemic about preventing the spread of COVID-19 and reducing its economic effects, as well as the impact those decisions had on children and families.
Primary Takeaways
“There is little published evidence regarding the impact of COVID-19 on children and families in Mobile,” the authors write. “Representatives of child-serving agencies, however, have reported concerns about the impact of the pandemic on children and youth in the region, based on what they are seeing and hearing from colleagues.”
The authors also say Mobile’s government prioritized keeping businesses open, and the mayor and public health department clashed over reopening policies. The lack of a mask mandate put Black and immigrant communities particularly at risk.
Overview and Objectives
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation began tracking response and recovery in nine communities that were part of its Sentinel Communities Project, including Mobile, Ala.
In this report, the authors wanted to explore the effect Mobile's pandemic response had on children and families.
Hypothesis or Approach
The authors collected information available through early February 2021.
How This Influences Change
Understanding how local officials responded to the pandemic and how policies affected children and families can help shape future policies and responses to new health threats.
Research: Go Deeper
In 2020, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) began tracking the COVID-19 response and recovery efforts of nine communities across the United States with the goal of better understanding how the pandemic, and the local response to it, is impacting health, well-being, and equity in those communities.
Previous reports summarized the pandemic’s early impacts (released July 2020) and the ways cross-sector collaboration has contributed to ongoing response and recovery efforts (released October 2020). In this series of reports, we examine the impact of the pandemic on children and families.
When COVID-19 began rapidly spreading in the U.S., policymakers issued stay-at-home orders, closed businesses, and restricted group gatherings. Schools also moved to remote instruction and many child-care services closed. Since then, response and recovery have been shaped by decisions made by local and state officials with respect to the reopening of businesses, schools, and child-care facilities, and the investments that communities are making to support the safety and well-being of working families and to facilitate remote learning.
In this report, based on information available through early February 2021, we look at decisions the community of Mobile, Ala., has made with respect to its economy and COVID-19 mitigation, and the impacts those decisions are having on children and families and on equity.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, March 2021
Research Team
This study and report was conducted and created by the following people.
- RAND Corporation
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