MPC Members: Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, David Van Riper, Jonathon P. Leider
Published in the journal Science Advances
COVID-19 mortality increases markedly with age and is also substantially higher among Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) populations in the United States. These two facts can have conflicting implications because BIPOC populations are younger than white populations. In analyses of California and Minnesota—demographically divergent states—the researchers show that COVID vaccination schedules based solely on age benefit the older white populations at the expense of younger BIPOC populations with higher risk of death from COVID-19. They find that strategies that prioritize high-risk geographic areas for vaccination at all ages better target mortality risk than age-based strategies alone, although they do not always perform as well as direct prioritization of high-risk racial/ethnic groups. Vaccination schemas directly implicate equitability of access, both domestically and globally.
Read Elizabeth Wrigley-Field's summary in this Twitter thread.
Watch a video of Elizabeth Wrigley-Field talking about this research.
