Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 25, 2025

Swabbing the Urban Environment - A Pipeline for Sampling and Detection of SARS-CoV-2 From Environmental Reservoirs
Published on: April 9, 2021
Estimating the Unknown: Greater Racial and Ethnic Disparities in COVID-19 Burden After Accounting for Missing Race
Katie Labgold1, Sarah Hamid1, Sarita Shah1,2,3
1From the Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University.
Background:
Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous persons in the United States have an increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and death from COVID-19, due to persistent social inequities. However, the magnitude of the disparity is unclear because race/ethnicity information is often missing in surveillance data.
Methods:
We quantified the burden of SARS-CoV-2 notification, hospitalization, and case fatality rates in an urban county by racial/ethnic group using combined race/ethnicity imputation and quantitative bias analysis for misclassification.
Results:
The ratio of the absolute racial/ethnic disparity in notification rates after bias adjustment, compared with the complete case analysis, increased 1.3-fold for persons classified Black and 1.6-fold for those classified Hispanic, in reference to classified White persons.
Conclusions:
These results highlight that complete case analyses may underestimate absolute disparities in notification rates. Complete reporting of race/ethnicity information is necessary for health equity. When data are missing, quantitative bias analysis methods may improve estimates of racial/ethnic disparities in the COVID-19 burden.
More Related Videos
09:55Bridging the Technology Divide in the COVID-19 Era: Using Virtual Outreach to Expose Middle and High School Students to Imaging Technology
Published on: September 28, 2022
08:13Using the Race Model Inequality to Quantify Behavioral Multisensory Integration Effects
Published on: May 10, 2019
Related Concept Videos
Bias in Epidemiological Studies
Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Confounding in Epidemiological Studies
Statistical Methods for Analyzing Epidemiological Data
Strategies for Assessing and Addressing Confounding
Confounding can be addressed at both the design phase of a study and through analytical methods after data...
Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms-SNPs