The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected historically underrepresented groups, specifically racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S., due to the inequitable systems and structures (Koh, 2020; Oppel Jr et al., 2020). The United States of America’s racial history is steeped in erasure, silencing, genocide, enslavement, stolen land, forceful removal, and settler colonialism (McKay et al., 2020). Racism has been and continues to be epidemic and normalized through systems designed to support and systematize whiteness as superior (Delgado & Stefancic, 1998). Critical Race Theory is used to counteract and provide counternarratives of Black / African American COVID Long Haulers. A tenet of critical race theory is the centering of the voices of People of Color (POCs) to counteract/decentralize the white hegemonic narrative. 

Based on the 2020 Census, the Black or African American non-Hispanic population is 12.1% of the U.S. population. Fifteen percent (5,907,483) of Black / African Americans live with a disability (Census Bureau, 2024). According to the National Center for Health Statistics, about 2.4% of the Black, non-Hispanic adult population currently have Long COVID. Long COVID is an infection-associated chronic condition that occurs after SARS-CoV-2 infection and is present for at least 3 months as a continuous, relapsing and remitting, or progressive disease state that affects one or more organ systems (Ely et al., 2024).  The research team comprises our primary presenter, Twanna Hodge, who is a doctoral student at the University of Maryland College of Information, as well as doctoral candidates Katherine Raymond, J. Nicole Miller, and Jane Behre; doctoral student Miranda Downey; and principal investigators, Drs. Beth St. Jean, Brooke Fisher Liu, and Duli Shi.  We conducted an online survey (n = 135) and follow-up interviews (n = 29) with adults in the U.S. who have experienced long COVID. After receiving approval from our University’s IRB, we used several methods to recruit participants, including posting a flyer on the COVID-19 Research Involvement Facebook Group, emailing official University email listservs, recontacting people who had signed up (but who had not been selected) for our earlier pilot study, and snowball sampling.  Our interviewees ranged in age from 23 to 67 (M = 43.1; SD = 13.5). Our sample skews more heavily female (80%) and White (70%). For this presentation, we will report our findings from an in-depth analysis of the interview transcripts of the three interviewees who self-identified as Black or African American, focusing on their experiences as Black / African American women (ages 29, 41, and 63) experiencing long COVID and misogynoir due to structural racism (Carney et al., 2023). Some initial themes are 1.) the necessity of racial concordance amongst healthcare providers (Greene et al., 2023; Moore et al., 2023) as a source of trustworthy information; 2.) medical gaslighting (Witvliet, 2022); and information marginalization (Gibson & Martin III, 2019) due to health disparities (Obinna, 2021) and systemic racism (Chinn et al., 2021).