Source: Health Policy Institute of Ohio
New research has found a strong link between COVID-19 and neighborhood disadvantage, a finding that supports earlier contentions of the connection between social factors and coronavirus disparities (Source: “How Neighborhood Disadvantage Drove COVID Health Disparities,” PatientEngagementHIT, July 21, 2021).
The study examined the connection between COVID-19 inequity and subway ridership in New York City. Neighborhoods that ranked higher on a COVID-19 inequity index — meaning that the neighborhood saw more factors that could put inhabitants at risk — also had higher subway ridership even after COVID-19 forced city-wide shutdowns.
Daniel Carrión, PhD, a researcher from Mount Sinai, said needing to ride the subway — or work an essential job — had a strong link to the unequal infection rates seen during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, largely because it limits the ability to socially distance.
“For us, subway utilization was a proxy measure for the capacity to socially distance,” Dr. Carrión, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine, told PatientEngagementHIT in an interview.
Although public health experts have made the link between the social determinants of health leading to actual infection, not just poor outcomes, Dr. Carrión and his colleagues put some data behind that. Social disadvantage was linked with higher subway utilization, and ultimately to higher infection rates and starker disparities.
“Folks like me were able to stay home for the majority of the pandemic and work from home. I didn’t need to use public transit whereas others did. What we found was that areas that had higher COVID inequity indices were also riding the subways more after the stay-at-home orders compared to folks that were low in the COVID inequity index.”