The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak continues to be felt throughout the world. To date, more than 180 countries are reporting cases within their borders, and the total number of cases has surpassed 2.7 million worldwide with a global death toll of more than 189,000. Medical professionals, at the frontline of the pandemic, are overwhelmed with COVID-19-infected patients in hospitals while lacking adequate supplies of PPE that are critical for their own safety. Beyond threatening the health and well-being of billions of people worldwide, the health crisis has brought the global economy to a standstill as countries have implemented stay-at-home orders, closed schools and offices, and required only essential employees to report to work. The fallout from a deadly pandemic and a contracted global economy of this magnitude has revealed the deep fissures of existing and chronic inequalities in the world related to job security, frayed safety nets, overburdened public health systems, the limited ability for local economies to withstand shocks and risks, digital divides, and the lack of emergency preparedness.

As the world struggles to respond to the devastation of the public health outbreak, experts and thought leaders from a wide variety of fields have sought to gain a holistic understanding of the current crisis and its impact. The Roosevelt House COVID-19 Forum brings together voices from our faculty, students and experts to share their analyses and opinions on the far-reaching economic, social, political, and community-level impacts of the pandemic; the policy responses that are needed to build and strengthen safety nets for affected communities; and the nature of emergency response protocols for preparedness that must be established to withstand shocks of this scale in the future. The Forum features opinion pieces, interviews, online webinars, and course offerings for students, and is a resource for those seeking an interdisciplinary lens of critical inquiry and analytic frameworks that will feature perspectives from the social sciences, humanities, and STEM fields.