Health Equity Tracker assesses impact of COVID-19 on underserved populations
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For minority patients and other historically underrepresented populations, the COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated longstanding disparities in health care.
To address these disparities, the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine launched its Health Equity Tracker, a data platform designed to assess the effect of COVID-19 and other diseases on these populations.
Supported by Gilead Sciences Inc., Google.org, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the CDC, the tracker is a data visualization program capable of monitoring multiple factors and conditions that may have influenced COVID-19 outcomes and worsened health disparities.
“Our Health Equity Tracker is a public-facing, scalable, data visualization solution platform that ingests multiple data sets ranging from demographics to COVID-19 and other health conditions, to social and political determinants of health,” Daniel E. Dawes, executive director of Satcher Health Leadership Institute, said in an interview with Healio. “Our tracker has an unparalleled ability to identify missing data gaps across the country, resulting in a novel, comparative approach to highlighting health inequities.”
Currently, the tracker monitors COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations across race, ethnicity, sex and age, as well as by state and county. It also evaluates comorbidities linked to COVID-19, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes, and considers social and cultural factors, such as lack of insurance and poverty. Intended to be a “living tool,” the tracker eventually will expand to include mental and behavioral health and focus on other social and political determinants of health, such as those that affect individuals with disabilities, the LGBTQ+ community and those with low socioeconomic status.
The tracker gleans data that policymakers, public health officials, advocates and community organizers can utilize to introduce policy changes and ensure health equity for underserved populations.
Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, assisted in the buildout of the Health Equity Tracker. In addition to providing $1.5 million in funding, Google.org supplied the project with more than 18 Google.org fellows, who have collaborated closely with Satcher Health Leadership Institute over the past 9 months. The fellows donated more than 15,000 work hours to the project, offering expertise in the areas of data analytics, engineering, project development, UX research and design support for the tracker.
Gilead also contributed to the project, with $1 million designated for the development of the tracker, the creation of a Black Health Equity Alliance and the formation of a COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. The alliance has partnered with Black organizations to create public service announcements and encourage vaccination among this population.
Dawes said although the tracker does not specifically track disparities in cancer care, he sees this as a potentially valuable use of the technology.
“The intended purpose of this tracker is to provide that much-needed context of what health equity truly looks like while highlighting the impact of social and political determinants of health on outcomes. When I think about the potential application of this tracker, our neighbors and loved ones who have battled cancer are top of mind,” Dawes told Healio. “How many more birthdays would have been celebrated had their cancer been caught in time or prevented?”
Dawes emphasized the importance of early cancer detection and noted that racial disparities often serve as obstacles to prompt detection and treatment.
“I know that early cancer detection is one of our best tools in the fight for a cancer-free tomorrow, but I also know that understanding the inequities that make early detection difficult is our only path toward that cancer-free tomorrow,” he said. “As we think of access to health, the uninsured population, which tends to be higher in racial minority communities, is most at risk for not having that tomorrow. We at Satcher Health Leadership Institute are just hoping that by creating this easy-to-use Health Equity Tracker, we can continue to do our part to secure a more equitable future for cancer care.”
Those who wish to explore the tracker may visit https://healthequitytracker.org.
For more information:
Daniel E. Dawes can be reached at Satcher Health Leadership Institute, 720 Westview Drive SW, Atlanta, GA 30310; email: ddawes@msm.edu.
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