More than a month into the battle against the novel coronavirus, some states have yet to release racial and ethnic demographic data critical to understanding how COVID-19 is impacting communities of color.
“Our decisions on what to add to the website area comes from feedback we’ve received,” said Nicole Peske, chief communications officer of the North Dakota Department of Health in an emailed statement. “The reason for not including racial data is simply that we’re working our way through the priority list and we’ve gotten less requests for that than other items.”
“Even if health departments are collecting the data, they may not feel compelled to share because it tells a very harsh story about the realities of people of color,” said Dr. Diana Hernandez, an assistant professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “I question whether that’s a political decision not to share the data.”
Farwell said the state has started releasing some of that information in a format that does not infringe on patient privacy. “We have people going back to attempt to track down the information, but under the circumstances, this is a long process,” said Nancy Nydam, communications director for the Georgia Department of Health.
“I think it’s more that people did not think [including racial data] was important,” said Dr. Joia Crear-Perry, President of the National Birth Equity Collaborative. “At a federal level we know that there’s a life or death difference in knowing which communities and who in those communities are being impacted that is so critical for us to come out on the other side of this healthy.
Similarly in Massachusetts, where nearly 75% of lab reports had been missing racial and ethnic information in the early weeks, the state Department of Public Health issued an order earlier this month to bolster the demographic data collection effort.
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