Lack of race data ‘massive barrier’
Vaccine distribution could be tailored better
After her longtime friend died of COVID-19, Abigail Echo-Hawk sat in her chair crying.
She wondered if her friend and mentor, a Native American like her, would be counted among the deaths – a worry that only added to her grief.
“I couldn’t help this thought that ran through my head: Is his story going to be present in the data? Or did we lose him even there?” she said of the tribal leader in his mid-50s.
Echo-Hawk is chief research officer at the Seattle Indian Health Board and a member of the We Must Count Coalition. The group of health equity leaders calls for better health data tracking to shed light on racial disparities because people of color suffer disproportionate rates of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths as a result of longstanding systemic inequities and racism.
A lack of data is further masking vaccination rollout transparency, health equity researchers say, and the data deficit is hurting those most vulnerable. So far, only 16 states are releasing vaccination counts by race and ethnicity, and the data is incomplete.
ZIP code-level vaccination data also is not widely available, obscuring which residents of specific neighborhoods are getting the shots. Isolated communities, such as rural and lowincome pockets of urban cities, are especially vulnerable.
“If you don’t actually disaggregate the data, see where the people are – you will then have people die who should not be dying,” said Dr. Joia Crear-Perry, a doctor and senior adviser to the coalition who founded the National Birth Equity Collaborative.
The preliminary figures from those 16 states are already raising concerns, according to a recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The analysis