How Many Lives Have Stay-At-Home Orders Saved?
May 11, 2020
The Dornsife School of Public Health (DSPH), through its Urban Health Collaborative (UHC), is working with the Big Cities Health Coalition (BCHC) to support the Coalition’s vision of healthy, more equitable cities through big city innovation and leadership. For the UHC, the partnership is an opportunity to advance its commitment to research, training, and policy translation in urban health locally and globally, leveraging the School’s historic expertise in public health practice in urban settings.
Shortly after this partnership began, cities around the world were faced with the COVID-19 pandemic. Stay-at-home orders were issued for almost all large cities and residents are facing the loss of not only life but livelihoods as well. However, stay-at-home orders are extremely crucial in slowing the spread of COVID-19.
The Big Cities Health Coalition (BCHC) released estimates that show that early actions by BCHC members, leaders from America’s largest metropolitan health departments, to get the public to stay home led to an estimated 2.1 million hospitalizations avoided and over 200,000 lives saved. These estimates, based on 45-day shelter-in-place/stay-at-home orders, were calculated by the Urban Health Collaborative at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health using a model published by The New York Times.
A powerful voice for public health departments in the nation’s largest, most urban cities, this partnership with Drexel’s Urban Health Collaborative advances BCHC's work by bringing expertise in policy, planning, data knowledge and evaluation to support BCHC’s strong commitment to evidence-based urban health practice.
Avoided hospitalizations and lives saved estimates for all 30 BCHC jurisdictions can be found below. The template for the estimation calculations was based on methodology developed by Community Information Now.
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Baltimore, Maryland
Boston, Massachusetts
Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina
Chicago, Illinois
Cleveland, Ohio
Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio
Dallas, Texas
Denver, Colorado
Detroit, Michigan
Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas
Houston, Texas
Indianapolis, Marion County, Indiana
Kansas City, Missouri
Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada
Long Beach, California
Los Angeles, California
Miami, Miami-Dade County, Florida
Minneapolis, Minnesota
New York City, New York
Oakland, Alameda County, California
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Phoenix, Maricopa County, Arizona
Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon
San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas
San Diego, California
San Francisco, California
San Jose, Santa Clara County, California
Seattle, King County, Washington
Washington, D.C.
Austin, Travis County
La Cuidad de Baltimore
Boston
Charlotte, Mecklenburg County
Chicago
Cleveland
Columbus, Franklin County
Dallas, Dallas County
Denver
Detroit
Ft. Worth, Tarrant County
Houston
Indianapolis, Marion County
Kansas City
Las Vegas, Clark County
Long Beach
Los Ángeles
Miami, Miami-Dade County
Minneapolis
Nueva York
Oakland, Alameda County
Filadelfia
Phoenix, Maricopa County
Portland, Multnomah County
San Antonino, Bexar County
San Diego, San Diego County
San Francisco
San Jose, Santa Clara County
Seattle, King County
Washington D.C.
To read more about the UHC’s response to the pandemic, please visit: bit.ly/UHC_COVID19.