A Powerful Voice: Why Generations Y and Z Can Lead us through COVID

Health research always has to start with filling a gap that will help people be better, get better or live better.

Products that succeed understand this. Research that delivers public health value understands this. COVID-19 has been groundbreaking, life changing, and eye opening in so many ways, but one of the most important outcomes is that it has shown why being ‘human centered’ is not a method or an approach, it is a fundamental value and a way of engaging with the world around us. Suddenly, businesses and individuals are working side by side for the same goals of sewing masks, developing hand sanitizer, delivering food for those who would otherwise go without, creating ways to engage while socially isolated, and providing resources for those who are abused, homeless or at increased risk. We demonstrate our human centeredness, our integrity, and our commitment to each other in these moments. Being human centered is about justice and equity, and raising all boats and hearing all voices. One of the most impactful statements in a recent New Yorker interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci was his perspective on the AIDS crisis and the need for better research. He recalls a moment when he questioned his own motives in the face of demonstrations about the crisis: “Let me put aside the goth dress–the earrings and the Mohawk haircuts and the black jackets — and just listen to what they have to say. And what they were saying made absolutely perfect sense.” [New Yorker, April 2020]. We are in one of those few moments where we look beyond the surface and noise, put aside our own motives, and really see each other. And when we really see each other, we can start to ask questions that matter so we can solve the fundamental problems we are too often able to ignore in the chaos of daily life.

The Power of Evidence

Health research is, and must always be, a systematic investigation of an unanswered question. Facts must be established so that conclusions are not driven by assumptions, guesses or preferences. Results are based on the data and are extracted through established analytic methods. Yet, it is not enough to employ rigorous methods. Applying the right process to the wrong question is unproductive. Now more than ever, it is important that we ask the right questions about COVID-19, and that we are clear about the purpose of asking. This is true whether we are studying a virus in a lab, conducting a clinical trial, evaluating an intervention or anything in between. Research is a search for truth starting from a point which is neither right nor wrong. In the search for truth through evidence, we must be willing to be wrong and open to readjusting our thinking because it is in this space that learning, growth and discovery occur. This opportunity to be wrong only exists when we start with the right question, the right audience, and is one that does not serve a misdirected purpose or have a predetermined answer.

The Power of Listening

What this means in the current health crisis is that we need to listen to all the audiences in order to solve the biggest challenges on the path to a new normal. Understanding how the COVID-19 virus affects older populations more seriously than younger populations in terms of the severity of the illness is important and necessary. But we can’t overlook the perspective of generations who have often been ignored as too young, too millennial, too socially disengaged, or too self-absorbed, because they are critical to understanding our pathway through this crisis. They are the front line workers, they are the essential employees. We can’t walk into a grocery store where we don’t see a young person running a register or stocking shelves. Consider the 18 million physicians, nurses and other health care workers putting themselves at risk to manage this health crisis; or the small business owner that is struggling to stay alive in the related economic crisis. Really look at the police officers, security detail, delivery drivers, and warehouse employees doing their jobs through this crisis. Many of these individuals are under 40 and are part of the 200 million faces that make up generations Y and Z. A significant contingent contributes to the economy in non-traditional ways. An estimated 34% of the US workforce is part of the gig economy according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pew Research Center data suggests that younger workers make up a quarter of industries at highest risk for job loss as a result of the pandemic. According to JP Morgan Chase, small business growth is most rapid for those aged 35-54 — businesses that risk closure without sustained income. These individuals may not be in the highest health risk groups of COVID-19 but the impact of unemployment, lack of insurance, or loss of a business will have significant long-term health, social, and financial consequences for these generations throughout their lives. They will shoulder the impact more than any other generation before or after.

The digital generations are not the first to be fundamentally changed by crises but they are living through a crisis the scope and size of which we have never seen before, at a time when they are just beginning to establish their mark in society. Their experiences are in the real world, on the ground, at the front lines of daily life. They aren’t imagining what the problems are, they are encountering them. Many of them, like grocery cashiers or box store employees, didn’t sign up to be essential workers. Gig workers and small business owners just wanted to bring their passion to the consumer. Most healthcare workers were not trained or working in infectious disease management. Yet they stand on the front lines. And when we let go of our motives or our presumptions about the digital generations and really look, we see people who fear being exposed to or exposing their families to COVID, who are concerned whether they will keep or be able to get a job, who worry whether their business will survive, or who wonder if they will be able to finish an education interrupted. Meanwhile, they have stood up and showed up in ways that could never have been imagined, despite these fears.

The Power of Change

So when we are wondering what the biggest issues and challenges are during this crisis, and we are seeking to understand what the right questions are to be asking, we can choose to discount these voices. Or, we can recognize that the future we are trying to understand is a future that will be largely created and lived by these generations. To ask the right questions and fill the biggest gaps we need to ask the right audiences. We should ask and listen to what they have to say. They may not answer the questions the way we expect, yet it is in this willingness to hear that we may learn. We may be asking the wrong question, or we may be asking the question in the wrong way, or maybe we aren’t considering all the ways in which we need to think about the right question. In order to solve the greatest public health and economic challenges before us we need to know who our audience is, we need to listen, and we need to be willing to be wrong. And then we, collectively, can work together to get to the important business of solving these crucial challenges that lay ahead.