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The speaker describes his early doubts about COVID-19’s impact and how data analysis changed his view. He introduces the health equity dashboard and shows how the pandemic is affecting U.S. communities unevenly.
back in march of 2020 a colleague and i were debating whether a new strain of coronavirus called sars kovi ii would have a measurable impact on u.s mortality the media hype was building and he thought this was goingto be major i was skeptical to prove the alarmist stories wrong i began downloading and analyzing daily covet 19 debts on my laptop well turned out i was wrong a story without data is a myth but data withouta story are just a bunch of numbers i'm an epidemiologist getting to the stories behind the data is what attracted me to this field building on that academic debate with my colleague i paired up with a team ofresearchers and students at emory university to track how social factors impact covid19 across u.s communities together we built the kovit 19 healthequity dashboard it's an interactive data visualization tool available to anyone the data we track paint a very
troubling picture of the u.s pandemic and our response as americans we are disproportionately dying of covid19 only one in 25 persons on this planet is an american yet we account for one in five of all kovid 19 deathsglobally how are we letting this happen in the richest most technologically advanced country in the world i believe some of the answer lies in a tale of two counties county a is a suburb and county b is aneighboring city in the midwest both have similar age and sex breakdowns and in the past year both counties recorded similar numbers of covet 19 cases per capita but county b has a death rate from covet 19 that isthree times as high as the death rate in county a hearing that you might be surprised and even question the data a little what if i tell you that county b has a riskier transmission environment a more medically
vulnerable population a more strained health care system and now what if i tell you that county b has a larger share of african americans and it is in this group that per capita cases was highest are you stillsurprised this is not just the story of washington and wayne county in michigan where i was born this is a story line playing out all across the united states we all heard media reports of emergency rooms and icusfilled with black and hispanic patients at first these reports confused me covet 19 is caused by a novel pathogen and therefore nobody should have immunity yet the picture in hospitals and later the statistics we tracked suggested who was
This section explains the three main drivers of severe COVID-19 outcomes: exposure risk, underlying health conditions, and access to quality care. It shows how these factors cluster in communities of color.
experienced a severe a severe outcome was not random so then what are the factors that lead to a severe outcome for covet 19 in the united states factor one it starts with coming into contact with the virus peopleworking jobs in nursing homes home health care factories and grocery stores where there is no option for remote work are more likely to be exposed to this virus black and hispanic americans make up a large share of adultsworking in those jobs and when the economy reopened last summer we saw cases rise in these groups in many states factor two once infected several underlying medical conditions can affect one's chances of being hospitalized or dying from covid19conditions like obesity and diabetes the conditions i studied prior to the pandemic proved to be particularly deadly black hispanic and native americans are more likely to have several of these conditions and as an aside it's not our genetics
that really matter for disparities in these conditions the research shows that it's social factors like income education and access to healthy foods that play a larger role and that brings me to factor three once someone experiences severe symptomsfrom covid19 that person needs treatments that only hospitals can provide in a pandemic access to timely and high quality healthcare is a life and death issue black hispanic and native americans are less likely to be insured and evenwhen insured they are more likely to live in areas with low quality health care these three contributors to fatal covid19 outcomes cluster in communities of color making some americans vulnerable multiple times over an effective pandemic response means that
The speaker defines equity versus equality and applies the idea to vaccine distribution. He details the practical barriers that make vaccination harder for Black and Hispanic Americans and argues for data-driven, equitable public health policy.
we acknowledge this as we allocate health resources it means that we allocate these resources equitably now equity is a term you're probably hearing a lot these days and i get asked about the difference between equity and equality onthe left hand side we have an equal allocation system in this system everyone gets the same crate regardless of where one stands you can see why that's problematic on the right hand side we have an equitable allocation systemeveryone gets the crate needed to achieve the goal equity is often discussed as a concept grounded in fairness and that's important but equity is not just about fairness in a pandemic equity is about effectiveness let's take the u.scovet 19 vaccine campaign for example as a nation our first priority was to protect americans working in high risk occupations and protect americans vulnerable to severe disease a public health response that's successful would be proportionate to these needs
and by either measure virus exposure or disease vulnerability we would expect communities of color to be prioritized yet three months into the vaccination campaign black and hispanic americans are lagging behind we hear a lot about vaccine hesitancy incommunities of color and certainly that's a contributing factor but vaccine hesitancy alone can account for this disparity so beyond motivation to get vaccinated let's talk about what it takes to get your shot in america you need internet accessor a lot of time to wait on the phone to fill out complex forms and navigate a fragmented appointment system black and hispanic households are less likely to have high-speed internet you need to be able to get toa vaccination center in most of america that means owning a car or knowing someone who does black and hispanic households are less likely to own a vehicle and in the south they typically have farther to travel to get
to one of these sites and you need time off of work not just to get to the center but sometimes wait for hours in line once there thinking back to the types of jobs that many black and hispanicamericans have time off of work is at the discretion of the employer and not the employee it can also come with a financial hit the emergent picture is one of multiple intersecting systemic barriers that predate the pandemic it'sabout a history of social and economic exclusion that has impacted the access to life-saving infrastructure especially among black hispanic and native americans but what happened in some communities of color early in the pandemic was a warning sign forthe entire nation since last august cases and debts have been rising in rural america many of these communities which are predominantly white also experience high poverty a digital divide and limited health care services what i've described for you
is not a myth in which we are powerless this story is backed by data that show us where we're falling short beating this pandemic means that we don't blindly use a one-size-fits-all approach and just hope that it willwork beating this pandemic means that we use the data to guide us on how we best leverage our vast technological and financial resources to head on address the barriers we've been talking about that's equity now some of you
The talk broadens the case for equity beyond disadvantaged groups, showing how ongoing inequities can affect everyone through variants, shutdowns, and strained hospitals. It ends with a call for collective action and a more inclusive future.
might be thinking that the only kind of equity that directly affects you is the type that involves your line of credit i'm going to ask you to think again because equity is not just about helping the disadvantaged ifthe virus continues at high levels of circulation we all have greater chance of coming into a contact with a new variant that threatens our past progress we all face the possibility of intermittent economic shutdowns and travel restrictions ifhospitals run out of beds or ventilators because of stretched healthcare capacity that might affect your chances of survival should you ever have the misfortune of needing these services so why then do we leave equity to the social justicewarriors why isn't equity everybody's businesswhere we go from here is in all of our hands it's on all of us to drive conversations on how and whether we weave equity into a rethink of our health policies our economy our schools and our communities
at large i call upon the tedx community to seize this critical moment in america's history and imagine a new narrative for america an america with no fence an america in which all of us can thrive no matter wherewe live thank
you