By Edwin McCulley | June 30, 2021
We recently developed a new dashboard section for tracking outcomes and inequities in COVID-19 vaccination. This section allows users to track, describe, and compare inequities in COVID-19 vaccination on multiple levels in 29 large US cities.
City Report: Vaccination
First, in the City Report Vaccination tab, users can select a city, explore, and visualize inequities in COVID-19 vaccination outcomes by race/ethnicity and by neighborhood. Figure 1 compares the percentage of individuals fully vaccinated by race/ethnicity for New York City, NY; indicating that the percentage of fully vaccinated Non-Hispanic Black individuals is 15.3% lower than Non-Hispanic Whites.
Figure 1
Additionally, in this same tab, users can examine inequities in COVID-19 vaccination outcomes by neighborhood characteristics. Figure 2 shows the percentage of individuals fully vaccinated by neighborhood-level Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) in New York City. In general, we observe lower percentages of fully vaccinated individuals in the most socially vulnerable neighborhoods, especially for neighborhoods in the Bronx and Brooklyn.
Figure 2
Compare Across Cities: Vaccinations
The Vaccinations Across Cities tab, allows users to compare COVID-19 vaccination rates and other vaccination outcomes across population subgroups, neighborhoods, and cities. Figure 3 allows users to visualize rate differences in the percentage of individuals fully vaccinated by Race/Ethnicity (at the individual-level). Here, we see that in 12 US cities, Non-Hispanic Blacks have a lower percentage of fully vaccinated individuals compared to Non-Hispanic Whites.
Inequities in % Fully Vaccinated by Race/Ethnicity
In 12 cities (⬤), NH Black have lower % Fully Vaccinated compared to NH Whites. In 0 cities (⬤), NH Black have higher % Fully Vaccinated compared to NH Whites.
Figure 3
Similarly users can explore differences in COVID-19 vaccination outcomes between the top and bottom quartiles (top & bottom 25%) of the select neighborhood indicators, such as, differences in the percentage of fully vaccinated population between neighborhoods at the top and bottom quartiles of the SVI. The results in Figure 4 indicate that in 14 US cities, neighborhoods that are the most socially vulnerable have lower percentages of fully vaccinated population, and in 1 US city (San Francisco), neighborhoods that are the most socially vulnerable have a higher percentage of the population that is fully vaccinated.
Differences in COVID-19 % Fully Vaccinated between neighborhoods at the top and bottom quartiles of Social Vulnerability Index (SVI)
In 14 cities (⬢), areas that are the Most Socially Vulnerable have lower % Fully Vaccinated rates. In 1 city (⬢), areas that are the Most Socially Vulnerable have higher % Fully Vaccinated rates.
Figure 4
Last, users can examine inequities in COVID-19 vaccination by city-level factors. Figure 5 shows the differences in COVID-19 vaccination outcomes between top and bottom quartiles (top & bottom 25%) of select city level factors (% Hispanic, % NH Black, SVI, and the Isolation Index for Hispanics and NH-Blacks). Figure 5 shows us that in cities with the highest segregation for both Hispanics and NH-Blacks have the lowest percentage of fully vaccinated populations.
Differences in % Fully Vaccinated between top and bottom quartiles of City Level Factors
Top Quartile relative to Bottom Quartile
Figure 5
Identifying inequities in COVID-19 outcomes is key to understanding the COVID-19 pandemic from an equity perspective, and we invite users to check out our dashboard, which is one of very few interactive platforms aimed towards examining COVID-19 inequities using an urban health approach.