This CWP project aims to reduce COVID-19 related grief in Harlem’s Black community by partnering Columbia researchers with local faith leaders and other community leaders to address intense and pervasive grief that has emerged as a result of the pandemic. 

Deaths from COVID-19 are twice as high in Black communities in the United States as in white communities, according to recent data from the CDC. Additionally, studies show that inequities and disparities interfere with the process of adapting to loss.  While attempts have been made to address the causes of these health disparities, less attention has been given to how to address and alleviate the Black community’s persistent, pervasive grief in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The project partners include leaders from the Harlem community and Columbia scholars, who are adapting digital tools – such as apps and videos – developed by Columbia’s Center for Complicated Grief to address prolonged grief disorder, a form of grief that is unusually intense and enduring and that pervades everyday life.

The project will work concurrently on two fronts: Guided by experts at SAFE Lab at the Columbia University School of Social Work, the project will engage Black community leaders in Harlem in a series of focus group discussions and will also collect and analyze personal narratives about experiences of grief from members of the Black community in online forums. The insights from these focus groups and from an analysis of the online writings will be used to adapt the Center’s digital tools to better serve the Black community. The modified digital tools will then be disseminated across Harlem and to other communities coping with similar challenges.

In Partnership With:

• Center for Complicated Grief (Columbia School of Social Work)
• Mobilizing Preachers and Community, New York
• SAFE Lab (Columbia School of Social Work)