Students, faculty providing coronavirus-related outreach to Latino population
As stay-at-home orders to stem the spread of COVID-19 were announced in March, Austin Ibele, a first-year student at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, investigated whether information about the coronavirus existed in Spanish to alert the area’s Latino population.
Ibele called COVID hotlines and found none with Spanish options. He scanned various local government and health department websites. Nothing.
Eventually, after scrolling several social media feeds, Ibele found a Spanish-language Facebook page named “STLJuntos,” which translates to “St. Louis Together.” Created in March, the newly formed page had just a few followers but offered updates on local stay-at-home mandates and links to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Spanish-language coronavirus page.