Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Mar;9(1):100495.
doi: 10.1016/j.hjdsi.2020.100495. Epub 2020 Nov 21.

Association of race, ethnicity, and community-level factors with COVID-19 cases and deaths across U.S. counties

Jose F Figueroa  1 , Rishi K Wadhera  2 , Winta T Mehtsun  3 , Kristen Riley  4 , Jessica Phelan  4 , Ashish K Jha  5
Affiliations

Association of race, ethnicity, and community-level factors with COVID-19 cases and deaths across U.S. counties

Jose F Figueroa et al. Healthc (Amst). 2021 Mar.

Abstract

The United States currently has one of the highest numbers of cumulative COVID-19 cases globally, and Latino and Black communities have been disproportionately affected. Understanding the community-level factors that contribute to disparities in COVID-19 case and death rates is critical to developing public health and policy strategies. We performed a cross-sectional analysis of U.S. counties and found that a 10% point increase in the Black population was associated with 324.7 additional COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population and 14.5 additional COVID-19 deaths per 100,000. In addition, we found that a 10% point increase in the Latino population was associated with 293.5 additional COVID-19 cases per 100,000 and 7.6 additional COVID-19 deaths per 100,000. Independent predictors of higher COVID-19 case rates included average household size, the share of individuals with less than a high school diploma, and the percentage of foreign-born non-citizens. In addition, average household size, the share of individuals with less than a high school diploma, and the proportion of workers that commute using public transportation independently predicted higher COVID-19 death rates within a community. After adjustment for these variables, the association between the Latino population and COVID-19 cases and deaths was attenuated while the association between the Black population and COVID-19 cases and deaths largely persisted. Policy efforts must seek to address the drivers identified in this study in order to mitigate disparities in COVID-19 cases and deaths across minority communities.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Proportion of Black Non-Latino Population and Number of COVID-19 Cases per 100,000 Across U.S. Counties. Figure shows the relationship between proportion of Black Non-Latinos residing in a county and COVID-19 case rates. The size of each circle reflects the total population of each county.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Proportion of Latino Population and Number of COVID-19 Cases per 100,000 Across U.S. Counties. Figure shows the relationship between proportion of Latinos residing in a county and COVID-19 case rates. The size of each circle reflects the total population of each county.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Johns Hopkins University Centers for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) 2020. Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases.https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html Accessed.
    1. Kendi I.X. The Atlantic. 2020. What the racial data show.https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-exposing-o... Accessed.
    1. Wadhera R.K., Wadhera P., Gaba P., et al. Variation in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths across New York city boroughs. J Am Med Assoc. 2020;323(21):2192–2195. - PMC - PubMed
    1. COVID-19 hospitalization and death by race/ethnicity. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. August 18, 2020:2020.
    1. Kubota Y., Heiss G., MacLehose R.F., Roetker N.S., Folsom A.R. Association of educational attainment with lifetime risk of cardiovascular disease: the atherosclerosis risk in communities study. JAMA Intern Med. 2017;177(8):1165–1172. - PMC - PubMed

MeSH terms