Racial, Economic, and Health Inequality and COVID-19 Infection in the United States
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Racial, Economic, and Health Inequality and COVID-19 Infection in the United States Vida Abedi 1,2 & Oluwaseyi Olulana 3 & Venkatesh Avula 1 & Durgesh Chaudhary 4 & Ayesha Khan 4 & Shima Shahjouei 4 & Jiang Li 1 & Ramin Zand 4 Received: 4 May 2020 / Revised: 4 May 2020 / Accepted: 27 July 2020 # W. Montague Cobb-NMA Health Institute 2020
Abstract Objectives There is preliminary evidence of racial and social economic disparities in the population infected by and dying from COVID-19. The goal of this study is to report the associations of COVID-19 with respect to race, health, and economic inequality in the United States. Methods We performed an ecological study of the associations between infection and mortality rate of COVID-19 and demographic, socioeconomic, and mobility variables from 369 counties (total population, 102,178,117 [median, 73,447; IQR, 30,761– 256,098]) from the seven most affected states (Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Louisiana, Massachusetts). Results The risk factors for infection and mortality are different. Our analysis shows that counties with more diverse demographics, higher population, education, income levels, and lower disability rates were at a higher risk of COVID-19 infection. However, counties with higher proportion with disability and poverty rates had a higher death rate. African Americans were more vulnerable to COVID-19 than other ethnic groups (1981 African American infected cases versus 658 Whites per million). Data on mobility changes corroborate the impact of social distancing. Conclusion Our study provides evidence of racial, economic, and health inequality in the population infected by and dying from COVID-19. These observations might be due to the workforce of essential services, poverty, and access to care. Counties in more urban areas are probably better equipped at providing care. The lower rate of infection, but a higher death rate in counties with higher poverty and disability could be due to lower levels of mobility, but a higher rate of comorbidities and health care access. Keywords Healthcare disparities . Health status disparities . Socioeconomic factors . COVID-19 . Economic inequality . Racial disparity . United States . Population-based analysis . Ecological-based study
Introduction
Jiang Li and Ramin Zand are co-senior authors. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-020-00833-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Ramin Zand [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Department of Molecular and Functional Genomics, Weis Center for Research, Geisinger Health System, Danville, PA, USA
2
Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
3
Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, Scranton, PA, USA
4
Geisinger Neuroscience Institute, Geisinger Health System, Danville, PA, USA
The complexity of managing patients with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a global pandemic [1] originated in China [2], has led to th
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