Multiple interventions needed to shrink pandemic burden in underrepresented populations

Multiple interventions are needed to combat the disproportionate burden from pandemics, like COVID-19, on underrepresented populations, according to a prospective longitudinal study published in JAMA Psychiatry.

“While multiple studies have assessed specific COVID-19 impacts on adults and youth, separately, very little is known about the transgenerational effects of this ongoing public health crisis,” Sarah Yip, PhD, of the department of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, and colleagues wrote.

“In addition, while COVID-19 is acknowledged to have widened health disparities, little is known about baseline predictors of such inequities, particularly at the level of family systems.”

Yip and colleagues sought to determine predictors of COVID-19 experiences, defined through child and parent reportage, using a multivariate pattern-learning framework from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) cohort, which included 11,875 children enrolled when they were aged 9 to 10 years.

The researchers utilized data from 9,267 families, from which factors associated with costs of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic from one generation to the next were determined. Data from ABCD were collected from 2016 to 2020, then released between 2019 and 2021 with respect to social distancing and other response measures related to the ongoing pandemic, including school closures and cessation of recreational activities. These data were analyzed in combination with ABCD COVID-19 rapid response data from May 2020 through August 2020.

Results showed that social determinants, including family structure, socioeconomic status and experiences with racism, were primarily associated with transgenerational impacts of COVID-19, as opposed to other predictors such as medical or psychiatric conditions. Data also revealed that families that identified as Asian, Black, Hispanic, other or a combination thereof, and/or Spanish-speaking families dealt with issues such as decreased resources, escalated likelihoods of financial worry and food insecurity.

However, Yip and colleagues reported that these groups were more likely to hold multigenerational conversations on COVID-19–associated health and prevention issues, such as handwashing, conserving food, protecting elderly individuals and social isolation.

Conversely, data additionally showed that white families, families with higher pre–COVID-19 income, as well as family units where at least one parent possessed a postgraduate degree, experienced reduced COVID-19-associated impact. Children from these families reported longer sleep duration, relative ease with remote learning and decreased worry about the pandemic’s impact on family finances.

“People from minoritized racial and ethnic populations experienced greater COVID-19 impacts associated with these inequities,” Yip and colleagues wrote. “Future work assessing the impact of community-level, transgenerational intervention strategies is urgently needed to combat the disproportionate burdens of the ongoing pandemic.”