Disproportionate COVID-19 Related Mortality Amongst African Americans in Four Southern States in the United States

  1. Nicole Betson
  2. Anirban Maitra

Reviewed by

Read the full article See related articles

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

Background

African Americans have been severely affected by COVID-19 noted with the rising mortality rates within the African American community. Health disparities, health inequities and issues with systemic health access are some of the pre-existing issues African Americans were subjected to within the southern states in the United States. Second, social distancing is a critical non-pharmacological intervention to reduce the spread of COVID-19. However, social distancing was not practical and presented a challenge within the African American community, specifically, in the southern states.

Objective

This article assesses the effect of COVID-19 on African Americans in the southern states.

Methodology

This short communication queried the publicly available Department of Health statistics on COVID-19 related mortality and underlying health conditions in four southern states (Alabama [AL], Georgia [GA], Louisiana [LA] and Mississippi [MS]) with a high proportion of African American residents. Second, the unacast COVID-19 toolkit was used to derive a social distancing (SD) grade for any given state, based on three different metrics: (i) percent change in average distance travelled (ii) percent change in non-essential visits and (iii) decrease in human encounters (compared to national baseline).

Results

Across the four states, on average, as many as 54% of COVID-19 related deaths are in the African American community, although this minority group comprises only 32% of the population cumulatively. This article finds that all four southern states received a social distancing grade of F. COVID-19 have demonstrated that adverse outcomes are higher in individuals with underlying health conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, or pre-existing pulmonary compromise.

Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed racial disparities in our healthcare system that disproportionately impacts African Americans within the four states of the southern United States. In addition, the lack of diversity in the healthcare system likely impacts this disproportionate impact on African American communities because it is not able to address its primary obligations within minority communities. Recognizing that there is a great need for African American representation or diversity in the health workforce would be able to better address the health disparities.

Article activity feed

  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.08.20124297: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.08.20124297v2 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.08.20124297v1 on medRxiv