Unequal but essential: How subsistence consumer-entrepreneurs negotiate unprecedented shock with extraordinary resilience during COVID-19.

We use qualitative interviews to study subsistence consumers confronting the global, pervasive and extended challenges of COVID-19, encompassing literally all realms of daily life. For subsistence consumers whose circumstances are filled with day-to-day uncertainty and a small margin of error to begin with, the pandemic has led to manifold uncertainties and a disappearing margin of error, with potentially lethal consequences. Their constraints to thinking and lack of self-confidence arising from both low income and low literacy are magnified in the face of the complex, invisible pandemic and the fear and panic it has caused.

A Bottom-Up Approach to Understanding Low-Income Patients: Implications for Health-Related Policy.

A bottom-up approach grounded in micro-level understanding of the thinking, feeling, behavioral, and social aspects of living with low income and associated low literacy can lead to greater understanding and improvement of interactions in the health arena. This paper draws on what we have learned about marketplace interactions in subsistence economies to inform innovations in medical education, design and delivery of healthcare for lowincome patients, outreach education, and future micro-level research at the human-healthcare interface.