Participatory Approaches to Addressing Missing COVID-19 Race and Ethnicity Data
1
School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
2
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA
3
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Godfred O. Boateng, Torsten B. Neilands and John Sauceda
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18(12), 6559; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18126559
Received: 7 May 2021
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Revised: 4 June 2021
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Accepted: 7 June 2021
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Published: 18 June 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Measuring Health Inequities among Vulnerable Populations)
Varying dimensions of social, environmental, and economic vulnerability can lead to drastically different health outcomes. The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-19) pandemic exposes how the intersection of these vulnerabilities with individual behavior, healthcare access, and pre-existing conditions can lead to disproportionate risks of morbidity and mortality from the virus-induced illness, COVID-19. The available data shows that those who are black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) bear the brunt of this risk; however, missing data on race/ethnicity from federal, state, and local agencies impedes nuanced understanding of health disparities. In this commentary, we summarize the link between racism and COVID-19 disparities and the extent of missing data on race/ethnicity in critical COVID-19 reporting. In addition, we provide an overview of the current literature on missing demographic data in the US and hypothesize how racism contributes to nonresponse in health reporting broadly. Finally, we argue that health departments and healthcare systems must engage communities of color to co-develop race/ethnicity data collection processes as part of a comprehensive strategy for achieving health equity.
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Keywords:
social epidemiology; racial disparities; ethnic disparities; data disaggregation; racial identity; ethnic identity; community-based participatory research; health policy
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Kader, F.; Smith, C.L. Participatory Approaches to Addressing Missing COVID-19 Race and Ethnicity Data. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 6559. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18126559
AMA Style
Kader F, Smith CL. Participatory Approaches to Addressing Missing COVID-19 Race and Ethnicity Data. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2021; 18(12):6559. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18126559
Chicago/Turabian StyleKader, Farah, and Clyde L. Smith. 2021. "Participatory Approaches to Addressing Missing COVID-19 Race and Ethnicity Data" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18, no. 12: 6559. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18126559
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