Episode 21: Long COVID: An Emerging, Essential Research Area

Vidya Sundar and Debra Brucker, co-principal investigators of the University of New Hampshire’s new Disability and Rehabilitation Research Project (DRRP) on Living and Working with Long COVID and Disabilities, funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDLRR), discuss their five-year planned research agenda.    The proposed quantitative and qualitative research studies will add new knowledge and understanding about who is at risk for Long COVID among persons with pre-existing disabilities.  Their study will analyze large data sets available to examine socio-demographic characteristics associated with high-risk of Long COVID for this target audience of individuals who already had disabilities before their COVID-19 diagnosis.  Such data sets will include such factors as age, race, ethnicity, gender, and economic status.   Their research activities will also include analysis of the impact of Long COVID for such individuals on their employment status through the conduct of multiple focus groups that include current and former employees with Long COVID and disabilities.

Sundar and Brucker have a five-part research agenda that will examine multiple aspects of Long COVID for people with pre-existing disabilities. A critical piece of their research is to build on their prior study on the use and impact of “job crafting,” or how individuals can redesign their jobs to better align with their strengths without having to self-identify with a disability and rely on the formal disability accommodation process. They discuss how the “job crafting” strategy can be impactful in creating informal arrangements that enable people with disabilities to accomplish certain job tasks. They examine how this can be effective in helping employees work to their strengths as a path for greater productivity and improved job performance.

Overall, through these various studies, Sundar and Brucker want to foster understanding of what Long COVID is, to understand who is at risk, and to help people with disabilities with Long COVID overcome the challenges that they may encounter in remaining employed.

• LISTEN: Spotify Episode 21: Long COVID: An Emerging, Essential Research Area
  Web: open.spotify.com/episode/1KasbgONAZSosPKvS1M7YE?si=o84-Ba3hTvCCrkUjAZTnoQ
• TRANSCRIPT: Transcript – Episode 21: Long COVID: An Emerging, Essential Research Area (PDF)

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