The Health Equity Discourse of Immigrant Public Health Leaders: A Critical Application of the IDEA Model

ABSTRACT During the COVID-19 pandemic, health experts emerged to deliver crisis messaging to a public that needed information to understand the nature of the mega-crisis and to know how to mitigate the risk of infection. Some of the public health experts were immigrants who drew attention to healthcare disparities in the U.S. and called for systemic reform of healthcare delivery. This study critically examines the health equity discourse of immigrant public health leaders (IPHLs). Employing a critical application of the IDEA Model of crisis messaging, the study interrogates how three IPHLs navigated and disrupted their stereotyped identities as “model minorities” who were medical experts and advocates of equitable healthcare.