As COVID slowly recedes, it’s increasingly clear that health care in Indian Country has been severely stressed. The system had a unique set of challenges before — and during — the crisis, which in many communities has highlighted persistent inequalities resulting from insufficient funding and resources. 

Being a student in the time of COVID-19 has meant living and learning in new ways. The same can be said about professors, who have faced their own challenges and opportunities while learning to teach on digital platforms. Everyone’s situation during this time is unique. Some are on campus with safety guidelines and others are remote learning. With these drastic changes, schools, faculty, students, and families have shown tremendous resilience. Here are some lessons being drawn from this crash course in change and adaptation.
 

Enlisting her decades-long research skills, Dr. Mary Jo Ondrechen is all in for the fight to understand — and ultimately defeat — the coronavirus. Dr. Ondrechen and her team are researching the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, at her laboratory at Northeastern University in Boston, where she is a professor of chemistry and chemical biology and principal investigator of the Computational Biology Research Group.

These days the lab where Kristina Gonzales-Wartz works is a very busy place. A biomedical scientist with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Gonzales-Wartz has joined the Laboratory of Immunogenetics in Rockville, Md., on an urgent mission to develop monoclonal antibodies against COVID-19.