The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which causes a respiratory illness known as Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), has caused a global pandemic of unprecedented proportion. As of April 28, 2020, there were over 3 million confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, including over 1 million cases within the United States. In addition, there has been over 213,000 COVID-19 related deaths globally, including 57,000 deaths in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately impacting racial/ethnic minority communities, as well as those who face socioeconomic disadvantage. Reasons for this disproportionate impact among racial/ethnic minorities include a greater burden of the chronic health conditions that place persons at risk of severe disease and death from COVID-19, poorer access to primary and specialty care, an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 due to barriers to practicing social distancing behaviors, and shortages of testing resources in disadvantaged communities. This pandemic has presented unprecedented needs for timely access to health- related data. The State of Maryland and surrounding regions including the District of Columbia are fortunate to have a well-functioning health information exchange, CRISP. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CRISP data have the potential to serve an essential function in tracking and understanding the care and outcomes of COVID-19 infections. This resource would be unique among COVID registries in that it includes all health events and findings among the entire population of a geographic area, regardless where a health service was delivered. As such, it is ideally suited to address questions of health disparities.
The Specific Aims of this administrative supplement are to (1) develop the CRISP data resource as a unique, population-based COVID- 19 registry on the highly secure Johns Hopkins Precision Medicine Analytics Platform, and (2) evaluate COVID-19 care and outcomes by race, neighborhood and socioeconomic status such that targeted strategies can be deployed to reduce emerging disparities.
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a global pandemic of unprecedented proportion with over 3 million confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide (including 1 million cases within the United States) and 213,000 COVID-19 related deaths globally (including 57,000 deaths in the United States). The COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately impacting racial/ethnic minority communities, as well as those who face socioeconomic disadvantage. The purpose of this project is to (1) develop a population-based data resource that will track COVID- 19 infections, health care delivery and outcomes, and then (2) use the data resource to evaluate COVID-19 care and outcomes by race, neighborhood and socioeconomic status such that targeted strategies can be deployed to reduce emerging disparities.
