When COVID-19 first appeared in North America, some called it the great equalizer. But the facts quickly revealed a grim reality: COVID-19 disproportionately impacts Black, Indigenous, poor and racialized communities. We started our conversations with this episode’s guest, Roberta Timothy, about a year ago at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Roberta is a health and human rights researcher and a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. But her work is not just theoretical. As a therapist and activist, she is intimately connected to her community. She says there are many reasons for health disparities. Some of these are historical, some are social. These are called the social determinants of health. Roberta was not alone at the start of the pandemic when she highlighted the fatal consequences of not dealing with these factors earlier.