Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Years of Potential Life Lost Attributable to COVID-19 in the United States: An Analysis of 45 States and the District of Columbia

• Activity Number: 320 - Electronic Health Records, Causal Inference and Miscellaneous
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 11, 2021 : 3:30 PM to 5:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Jay J Xu* and Thomas R. Belin
• Companies: University of California, Los Angeles and UCLA FSPH
• Keywords: Coronavirus; COVID-19; Public Health; Racial/Ethnic Disparities; SARS-CoV-2; Years of Potential Life Lost

Abstract

The COVID-19 epidemic in the U.S. has disproportionately impacted communities of color across the country. We focus on racial/ethnic disparities in years of potential life lost (YPLL) attributable to COVID-19, estimating percentages of total YPLL for non-Hispanic (NH) Whites, NH Blacks, Hispanics, NH Asians, and NH American Indian or Alaska Natives, contrasting them with their respective percent population shares, as well as age-adjusted YPLL rate ratios (anchoring comparisons to NH Whites) in each of 45 states and D.C. using data from the National Center for Health Statistics as of December 30, 2020. Using a novel Monte Carlo simulation procedure to perform estimation, our results reveal substantial racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-19-attributable YPLL across states, with a prevailing pattern of non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics experiencing disproportionately high and non-Hispanic Whites experiencing disproportionately low COVID-19-attributable YPLL. Furthermore, estimated disparities are generally more pronounced when measuring mortality in terms of YPLL compared to death counts, reflecting the greater intensity of the disparities at younger ages.