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Assessing Disparities in COVID-19 Testing Using National COVID Cohort Collaborative
Jinyan Lyu1, Wanting Cui1, Joseph Finkelstein1
1Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York NY, USA.
Studies in Health Technology and Informatics
|July 1, 2022
Summary
The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) dataset shows disparities in COVID-19 testing representation. Minority groups, older adults, and females were more represented, while younger individuals and Hispanic/Latino populations were less represented compared to census data.
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Health Informatics
- Epidemiology
Background:
- The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated large-scale data collection for research.
- Understanding representation in health datasets is crucial for identifying health disparities.
- The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) dataset provides a valuable resource for studying the pandemic's impact.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess potential disparities in COVID-19 testing representation within the N3C dataset.
- To compare demographic characteristics of patients in the N3C dataset with US census data for ten selected states.
- To identify underrepresented and overrepresented populations in COVID-19 testing data.
Main Methods:
- Utilized the NCATS National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) dataset, encompassing over 14 billion medical records.
- Identified over 12 million patients tested for COVID-19 across the US.
- Compared demographic distributions (race, ethnicity, age, sex, urban/rural) from the N3C dataset against corresponding US state census data for ten states.
Main Results:
- Minority racial groups showed higher prevalence in the N3C dataset compared to census data.
- Hispanic and Latino populations were slightly underrepresented in N3C relative to state census data.
- Older adults (over 65) were overrepresented, while children (under 18) were underrepresented.
- Females were more represented in N3C than in state data.
- All ten states exhibited a higher representation of urban populations versus rural populations in N3C compared to census data.
Conclusions:
- The N3C dataset demonstrates demographic variations in COVID-19 testing representation compared to the general population.
- Findings highlight potential biases in data collection that may affect the generalizability of research findings.
- Further investigation is needed to understand the implications of these representation disparities for public health initiatives and equitable care.
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