February 2, 2021

Urban Health Collaborative (UHC) Director and Dornsife Dean Ana Diez Roux, MD, PhD, MPH and Assistant Professor Usama Bilal, MD, PhD, MPH, have been awarded a one year, $250,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

This study will focus on building on the Big Cities Health Coalition (BCHC) COVID-19 Health Inequities in Cities Dashboard to characterize the availability and inequalities of COVID-19 testing, characterize policies that cities have implemented to reduce these inequities, and evaluate the effects of these policies.

The “COVID-19 Health Inequities in Cities Dashboard” is a powerful data tool created by the UHC that visualizes trends and inequities in COVID-19 related outcomes over time and across BCHC cities. The dashboard aims to inform decision-making by public health leaders in BCHC cities and will educate the public, policymakers, and public health officials about the ways in which race/ethnicity, neighborhood, and city characteristics influence COVID-19 outcomes. The dashboard includes information on COVID-19 incidence, mortality, testing, test positivity, and hospitalizations in BCHC cities.

The project will focus on select BCHC cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Long Beach, and aims to meet three goals. The first goal is to describe trends and inequities in testing and in access to testing for COVID-19 in select BCHC cities by displaying data on testing and access, spatial and racial/ethnic inequities in COVID-19 and testing by city, and geographic availability of testing. The second is to characterize the current guidelines on COVID-19 testing in select BCHC cities with a focus on the nature and timing of guidelines, policies, or programs. Lastly, the team will evaluate the impact of testing policies that BCHC cities have implemented on spatial and ethnic inequities in COVID-19 testing and incidence. The team will also explore the feasibility of exploring inequities in vaccine access and policies designed to tackle these inequities

Learn more about the BCHC COVID-19 Inequities in Cities Dashboard.