Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: San Francisco State University

Title of entry: Professor reveals Filipino caregivers vulnerable to exploitation during pandemic

About this entry: This piece covers research about a group of healthcare workers who’ve been treated unfairly during the pandemic, according SF State Associate Professor of Sociology Valerie Francisco-Menchavez. That group includes people who are like Francisco-Menchavez's grandmother.

Francisco-Menchavez attributes her grandmother’s early death to the stress she had as a caregiver for the elderly. This connection was one of the reasons why she conducted research on Filipino caregivers in the U.S., many of whom are migrant workers from the Philippines, and the challenges they experienced during the pandemic.

A lot of these caregivers came from the Philippines for higher wages to support family members in their homeland. What the research shows, though, is that where they worked were often sites for Covid-19 outbreaks. If they worked, they could get sick. If they didn’t work, they couldn’t help their families.

Author Kent Bravo, media relations specialist at SF State, conveys this catch-22 by using personal anecdotes from the research participants and interviews with Francisco-Menchavez and student researcher Alyssa Barquin. Through this piece, Bravo — who is also of Filipino descent — not only puts a spotlight on important frontline workers but also shows an important nuance of the Filipino culture: that family is often seen as more important than anything else.