Understanding racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-19 mortality using a novel metric: COVID excess mortality percentage. Am J Epidemiol 2024 Jun 03;193(6):853-862
Date
02/20/2024Pubmed ID
38375671Pubmed Central ID
PMC11145910DOI
10.1093/aje/kwae007Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85195227154 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 1 CitationAbstract
Prior research on racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-19 mortality has often not considered to what extent they reflect COVID-19-specific factors, versus preexisting health differences. This study examines how racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-19 mortality vary with age, sex, and time period over April-December 2020 in the United States, using mortality from other natural causes as a proxy for underlying health. We study a novel measure, the COVID excess mortality percentage (CEMP), defined as the COVID-19 mortality rate divided by the non-COVID natural mortality rate, converted to a percentage, where the CEMP denominator controls (albeit imperfectly) for differences in population health. Disparities measured using CEMP deviate substantially from those in prior research. In particular, we find very high disparities (up to 12:1) in CEMP rates for Hispanics versus Whites, particularly for nonelderly men. Asians also have elevated CEMP rates versus Whites, which were obscured in prior work by lower overall Asian mortality. Native Americans and Blacks have significant disparities compared with White populations, but CEMP ratios to Whites are lower than ratios reported in other work. This is because the higher COVID-19 mortality for Blacks and Native Americans comes partly from higher general mortality risk and partly from COVID-specific risk.
Author List
Yuan AY, Atanasov V, Barreto N, Franchi L, Whittle J, Weston B, Meurer J, Luo QE, Black BAuthors
Benjamin Weston MD, MPH Associate Professor in the Emergency Medicine department at Medical College of WisconsinJeffrey Whittle MD Professor in the Medicine department at Medical College of Wisconsin
MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AdolescentAdult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Child
Child, Preschool
Female
Health Status Disparities
Humans
Infant
Male
Middle Aged
United States
Young Adult
