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How is political party polarization affecting population health? Study delves into COVID-19 mortality rates and stress on ICU capacity from 4/21–3/22

Republican elephant and Democratic donkey

A novel study published in Lancet Regional Health – Americas by HCPDS faculty member Nancy Krieger, PhD, and her colleagues examines links between the political ideology of U.S. elected officials across all 435 U.S. Congressional districts and the COVID-19 outcomes of their constituents. Findings point to “the higher the exposure to political conservatism, the higher the COVID-19 mortality rates and stress on hospital intensive care unit (ICU) capacity.” photo: DonkeyHotey…

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Quantitatively analyzing the working conditions of the informally employed domestic worker in a new way

Cleaning supplies and a woman's hand in a rubber glove

What sort of working conditions (hazards and protections) are domestic workers informally employed by private households exposed to? Until now, there was not much quantitative analysis about patterns of workplace hazards faced by these workers. Harvard Pop Center Associate Director Jason Beckfield, faculty member Nancy Krieger, and their colleagues use latent class analysis in their paper to shed light on “distinct patterns of workplace hazards, … and [domestic workers’] exposures…

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Paper awarded ‘Highly Cited Trophy’ and ‘Hot Paper’ designation by Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information

Graphic from paper that shows COVID-19 inequalities by disadvantaged counties

What started as a Harvard Pop Center Working Paper, and was then published in a COVID-19 supplement in the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice, has been awarded a ‘Highly Cited Trophy’ as well as designated a ‘Hot Paper’ from Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The article in JPHMP was cited 107 times in less than one year of publication and is considered to be in the top…

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Two working papers document COVID-19 stats in light of county-level political lean and regional inequities

Map of United States counties during 2020 election

Two recently posted Harvard Pop Center working papers by Nancy Krieger, PhD, and her colleagues document COVID-19 cases and deaths from July 1 – September 15, 2021, spotlighting greater risk in Republican-leaning counties (particularly when coupled with higher poverty levels), and in those regions of the country with greater inequities.

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“Picturing Prevention” working paper offers impactful visualizations of the protection of vaccination from hospitalization and death due to COVID-19

Graph showing Visualization of the number of persons fully vaccinated and unvaccinated, and the number of hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19, for 12 US states, January – July 2021.

A Harvard Pop Center Working Paper by Jarvis T. Chen, ScD, Christian Testa, BS, William P. Hanage, PhD, and Nancy Krieger, PhD, offers vivid and simple graphics that illustrate why getting vaccinated against COVID-19 matters by depicting available data for 12 states from January – July 2021.

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Krieger et. al. call for medical journals to publish more empirical studies on racism and health

Head shot of Nancy Krieger

In this analysis published in Health Affairs, Nancy Krieger, professor of social epidemiology,  and her colleagues take a look back at how many times the word “racism” appears in a search of scientific literature published over the last three decades by four of the world’s leading medical journals. The authors have also authored this piece published in Time Magazine that introduces the findings of their study to a wide and…

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Finally, a look at COVID-19 mortality rates by race/ethnicity AND EDUCATIONAL LEVEL

Graphs showing COVID-19 mortality rate in U.S. by race/ethnicity and age

“Intersectional inequities in COVID-19 mortality by race/ethnicity and education in the United States, January 1, 2020–January 31, 2021,” is the latest Harvard Pop Center working paper by Jarvis Chen, Christian Testa, Pamela Waterman, and Nancy Krieger. On February 2, the US National Center for Health Statistics published data relating to COVID-19 deaths that had been missing from the government health statistics for the first year of the pandemic under the…

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It’s “Groundhog Day,” AGAIN! Nearly one-half of COVID-19 vaccination data is missing race/ethnicity info., reminiscent of earlier gaps in COVID-19 case and mortality data

Collage with COVID-19 vaccines, race and ethnicity form with a question mark

A Harvard Pop Center working paper points out that the Morbidity and Mortality report by the US Centers for Disease Control released on February 2 (which happened to be Groundhog Day) is missing race and ethnicity information for nearly half of the people who were vaccinated during the first month of the roll out. Age and gender information were missing from only .1% and 3% respectively. The paper calls for…

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