Report Publish Date: Winter 2024
In the six locations where the dashboard was piloted, rates of vaccination ranged from under 60% to 95%. The three pilot sites where higher percentages of Black people lived had lower vaccination rates than the three other sites. Counties with lower vaccination rates had high indicators of structural racism, such as residential segregation and high mortgage denial rates.
The authors were developing the Project REFOCUS dashboard, which tracked COVID outcomes and efforts to stop the disease alongside measures of structures, systems, and policies that were worsening the outcomes of communities of color during the pandemic. The dashboard was piloted in six locations: Albany, Georgia; Bronx, New York; Detroit, Michigan; Helena/West Helena, Arkansas; San Antonio, Texas; and Wake County, North Carolina.
The authors wanted to see how vaccination rates were affected by demographics, social determinants such as eviction rates, the area’s COVID policies, and issues associated with structural racism, such as residential segregation and high mortgage denial rates.
The authors used the dashboard to create profiles of the six sites, including demographics like race, ethnicity, and languages spoken at home; proportion of residents who were vaccinated; indicators of racism such as residential segregation; and information about COVID investments and policies in the area.
Data came from multiple sources, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, County Health Rankings, National Academy for State Health Policy, and the American Public Health Association.
“Although epidemiologic surveillance data provide critical information about the spread of COVID and mitigation efforts, these details alone do not reveal the root causes of COVID-related inequities.”
—Ezinne Nwankwo, USC; Cindy Le, UCLA; Natalie J. Bradford, University of Texas at San Antonio; Dillon Trujillo, UCLA; Aisha D. Fletcher, UCLA; Chandra L. Ford, Emory University
“The contextual information the Project REFOCUS dashboard provides can help in identifying structural barriers to COVID mitigation and interventions,” the authors write. Similar information could help track and reduce disparities during future public health emergencies.
$84,460
Awarded on: 12/15/2021
Timeframe: 2021-2023
Grant number: 79361
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Introduction: Coronavirus disease (COVID) dashboards rarely provide insights about the racialized contexts in which vaccination inequities occur.
Objective: The purpose of this study was to use the emerging Project REFOCUS dashboard to contextualize COVID vaccination patterns among 6 diverse communities.
Methods: We queried the dashboard to generate descriptive statistics on vaccination trends and racism-related contextual factors among the 6 Project REFOCUS pilot sites (Albany, Georgia; Bronx, New York; Detroit, Michigan; Helena/West Helena, Arkansas; San Antonio, Texas; and Wake County, North Carolina).
Results: Vaccination rates, demographic indicators, and contextual factors differed across sites. As of October 17, 2022, the proportion of people who had received at least 1 COVID vaccine dose ranged from 58.4% (Michigan) to 95.0% (North Carolina). The pilot sites with the greatest percentage of Black residents (Georgia, Michigan, and Arkansas) had lower proportions of fully vaccinated people. The Michigan site had the highest level of residential segregation between Black and White residents (78.5%) and non-White and White residents (68.8%), whereas the Arkansas site had the highest overall mortgage denial rates (38.9%). Both sites represent settings where over 75.0% of residents report Black race and over 30.0% of the population live in poverty.
Discussion: The dashboard integrates racism-related factors with COVID vaccination visualizations and provides a fuller picture of the context in which COVID trends are occurring.
Conclusions: Community organizers, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners can track racism-related factors and other social determinants of health as part of the contexts in which COVID-related inequities occur.
Ethn Dis. 2024;34(1):1–7; doi:10.18865/ed.34.1.1
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