Wikipedia

User:Rshrid/Racial Disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

< User:Rshrid

Greetings and thanks for coming to give feedback!

I'm proposing to refine the article Racial Disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The latest draft of article edits can be found here.

Please note that the template provided below for redefining the Racial disparities article is evolving -- the latest version of the template (implemented) can be found on the Draft page of the article.

In defense of revisions:

This article on Racial Disparities receives only a few page views per day, which is far less than the hundreds received by the related article “Xenophobia and racism related to the COVID-19 pandemic.” This suggests poor linkage with other, highly-trafficked parent articles. This article on Racial Disparities is also isolated from many WikiProjects that may find the topic to be particularly significant and timely. Speaking specifically to content and organization, the article contains a fairly complex framework for organizing information. By consequence, it only glances over a limited few racial and ethnic groups in the US. Racial groups have already been defined by the US Census Bureau, and discussion of these groups would add a firmer structure to the page. Moreover, the current article has no systematic coverage of the social determinants of health. These components have been itemized in several sources and would serve as a tremendously useful organizational framework. This proposed revision is notable because of its timeliness, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is exacting many race-specific consequences; however, we have retained poor documentation of these effects. Understanding unequal outcomes is the first step towards solutions that eliminate these disparities.


I intend to reformat the article to fit this template:

  1. Cumulative effects on various minority groups (a summary of COVID-related infection, mortality, miscellaneous health, and non-health effects discussed in the sections below) - This section will consider race-specific inequalities in (1) infection and mortality directly attributable to COVID-19, (2) a summary of economic consequences, (3) a summary of social consequences, (4) and policy response and its efficacy (if any).
    • 1.1 Black Americans
    • 1.2 Asian Americans
    • 1.3 Latinx Americans
    • 1.4 Indigenous Americans
    • 1.5 Pacific Islanders
  2. Predisposing factors, infection rates, and general impacts - Considering that neighborhood/physical environment, housing, occupation, education/income/wealth gaps, and overall poor access to testing are five main predisposing factors for racial minorities
    • 2.1 Black Americans
      • Case infection rate
        • Co-occurrence of chronic disease
        • Association with housing environment (SDH 4)
      • Association with economic stability (SDH 1)
        • Association with social and work relationships (SDH 5)
        • This and further sections on economic impacts can be described broadly loss of productivity by (1) societal scales (i.e., reduction in workforce by COVID death, illness, or loss of job) and (2) individual scales (i.e., economic constraints on a single family that translates to other domains including healthcare/education/homeownership/etc.)
      • Association with education access and quality (SDH 2)
        • Community response towards public health policy
    • 2.2 Asian Americans
      • Case infection rate
        • Co-occurrence of chronic disease
        • Association with housing environment (SDH 4)
      • Association with economic stability (SDH 1)
        • Association with social and work relationships (SDH 5)
      • Association with education access and quality (SDH 2)
        • Community response towards public health policy
    • 2.3 Latinx Americans
      • Case infection rate
        • Co-occurrence of chronic disease
        • Association with housing environment (SDH 4)
      • Association with economic stability (SDH 1)
        • Association with social and work relationships (SDH 5)
      • Association with education access and quality (SDH 2)
        • Community response towards public health policy
    • 2.4 Indigenous Americans
      • Case infection rate
        • Co-occurrence of chronic disease
        • Association with housing environment (SDH 4)
      • Association with economic stability (SDH 1)
        • Association with social and work relationships (SDH 5)
      • Association with education access and quality (SDH 2)
        • Community response towards public health policy
    • 2.5 Pacific Islanders
      • Case infection rate
        • Co-occurrence of chronic disease
        • Association with housing environment (SDH 4)
      • Association with economic stability (SDH 1)
        • Association with social and work relationships (SDH 5)
      • Association with education access and quality (SDH 2)
        • Community response towards public health policy
  3. Adverse health outcomes and mortality
    • 3.1 Black Americans
      • Mortality rate
        • Association with housing environment (SDH 4)
        • Public health response
      • Consequences on economic stability (SDH 1)
        • Consequences on social and work relationships (SDH 5)
    • 3.2 Asian Americans
      • Mortality rate
        • Association with housing environment (SDH 4)
        • Public health response
      • Consequences on economic stability (SDH 1)
        • Consequences on social and work relationships (SDH 5)
    • 3.3 Latinx Americans
      • Mortality rate
        • Association with housing environment (SDH 4)
        • Public health response
      • Consequences on economic stability (SDH 1)
        • Consequences on social and work relationships (SDH 5)
    • 3.4 Indigenous Americans
      • Mortality rate
        • Association with housing environment (SDH 4)
        • Public health response
      • Consequences on economic stability (SDH 1)
        • Consequences on social and work relationships (SDH 5)
    • 3.5 Pacific Islanders
      • Mortality rate
        • Association with housing environment (SDH 4)
        • Public health response
      • Consequences on economic stability (SDH 1)
        • Consequences on social and work relationships (SDH 5)
  4. Access to treatment and vaccinations
    • Decreased access to treatment and vaccination, on average, for minority populations
    • 5.1 For Black Americans
    • 5.2 For Asian Americans
    • 5.3 For Latinx Americans
    • 5.4 For Indigenous Americans
    • 5.5 For Pacific Islanders
  5. Racism, xenophobia, and discrimination
  6. References


A list of sources (probably mutually exclusive with the ones below), to further support the notability of this article, can be found on my user page.

Context and brief overview of the topic edit

Social determinants of health (SDH), as defined by the USDHS, are "conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks" [1]. These considerations, a fairly new product of growing evidence, evolved out of the long-held understanding that socioeconomic status and health are intimately intertwined[2]. By consequence of situations being influenced by different factors, it can be expected that the importance of contributions by various SDH domains can be prioritized based on the situation at hand. But beyond considering different SDH domain prioritization for each situation, recent literature suggests that SDH data can inform models to predict healthcare outcomes[3][4][5], a more active notion (rather than passively descriptive) that greatly informs my future discussion of Racial disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Hence, I have focused the outline, as presented above, around SDH as a framework for evaluating social factors that influence healthcare outcomes. The fit is not perfect -- as with any template that aims to simplify a complex and interconnected set of issues -- but I accept the limitations and accept SDH as a sufficiently comprehensive metric for evaluating non-biological social influences on health outcomes.

In this process, should I fail to afford a fair treatment of an important domain within this topic, I hope that the collective knowledge of Wikipedians can fill in the gaps.


Hopefully the above provides suitable conceptual background for how I'm approaching this article revision. A draft of revised edits can be found here.

Assorted References edit

The final draft of the article will present sources using a consistent citation style!

  1. ^ "Social Determinants of Health - Healthy People 2030 | health.gov". health.gov. Retrieved 2021-10-15.
  2. ^ Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Assessing Interactions Among Social, Behavioral, and Genetic Factors in Health; Hernandez LM, Blazer DG, editors. Genes, Behavior, and the Social Environment: Moving Beyond the Nature/Nurture Debate. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2006. 2, The Impact of Social and Cultural Environment on Health. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK19924/
  3. ^ Meddings, Jennifer; Reichert, Heidi; Smith, Shawna N.; Iwashyna, Theodore J.; Langa, Kenneth M.; Hofer, Timothy P.; McMahon, Laurence F. (2016-11-15). "The Impact of Disability and Social Determinants of Health on Condition-Specific Readmissions beyond Medicare Risk Adjustments: A Cohort Study". Journal of General Internal Medicine. 32 (1): 71–80. doi:10.1007/s11606-016-3869-x. ISSN 0884-8734. PMC 5215164. PMID 27848189.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: PMC format (link)
  4. ^ Seligman, Benjamin; Tuljapurkar, Shripad; Rehkopf, David (2018-04-01). "Machine learning approaches to the social determinants of health in the health and retirement study". SSM - Population Health. 4: 95–99. doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2017.11.008. ISSN 2352-8273. PMC 5769116. PMID 29349278.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: PMC format (link)
  5. ^ Santamaría-García, Hernando; Baez, Sandra; Gómez, Carlos; Rodríguez-Villagra, Odir; Huepe, David; Portela, Maria; Reyes, Pablo; Klahr, Joel; Matallana, Diana; Ibanez, Agustin (2020-05-12). "The role of social cognition skills and social determinants of health in predicting symptoms of mental illness". Translational Psychiatry. 10 (1): 165. doi:10.1038/s41398-020-0852-4. ISSN 2158-3188. PMC 7280528. PMID 32513944.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: PMC format (link)

Your thoughts, comments, and feedback would be greatly appreciated on any part of this proposed contribution.

Related topics edit

Other pages that either discuss or should discuss impacts of COVID-19 in the US that disproportionately affect certain social groups can be found here:


This list is not comprehensive but serves as an adequate starting point for coverage of COVID-19-related social topics.

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