Health Promotion and Racial Disparity in COVID-19 Mortality Among African American Populations

Clement G Yedjou; Shayla Webster; Daniel Osborne; Jinwei Liu; Yoga Balagurunathan; Carolyn Odewuni; Lekan Latinwo; Pierre Ngnepiepa; Richard Alo; Paul B Tchounwou

doi:10.29011/2690-9480.100168

Health Promotion and Racial Disparity in COVID-19 Mortality Among African American Populations

Rep Glob Health Res. 2023;6(3):168. doi: 10.29011/2690-9480.100168. Epub 2023 Sep 22.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biological Sciences, College of Science and Technology, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, 1610 S. Martin Luther King Blvd, Tallahassee, FL 32307, USA.
² Department of Mathematics, College of Science and Technology, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, 1610 S. Martin Luther King Blvd, Tallahassee, FL 32307, USA.
³ Department of Computer Science, College of Science and Technology, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, 1610 S. Martin Luther King Blvd, Tallahassee, FL 32307, USA.
⁴ Moffitt Cancer Center, 12902 USF Magnolia Drive, Tampa, FL 33612, USA.
⁵ RCMI Center for Urban Health Disparities Research and Innovation, Morgan State University, 1700 E. Cold Spring Lane, Baltimore, MD 21252, USA.

Abstract

COVID-19, known as Coronavirus Disease 2019, is a major health issue resulting from novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Its emergence has posed a significant menace to the global medical community and healthcare system across the world. Notably, on December 12, 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the utilization of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. As of July 31, 2022, the United Stated has witnessed over 91.3 million cases of COVID-19 and nearly 1.03 million fatalities. An intriguing observation is the recent reduction in the mortality rate of COVID-19, attributed to an augmented focus on early detection, comprehensive screening, and widespread vaccination. Despite this positive trend in some demographics, it is noteworthy that the overall incidence rates of COVID-19 among African American and Hispanic populations have continued to escalate, even as mortality rates have decreased. Therefore, the objective of this research study is to present an overview of COVID-19, spotlighting the disparities among different racial and ethnic groups. It also delves into the management of COVID-19 within the minority populations. To reach our research objective, we used a publicly available COVID-19 dataset from kaggle:https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/paultimothymooney/covid19-cases-and-deaths-by-race. In addition, we obtained COVID-19 datasets from 10 different states with the highest proportion of African American populations. Many considerable strikes have been made in COVID-19. However, success rate of treatment in the African American population remains relatively limited when compared to other ethnic groups. Hence, there arises a pressing need for novel strategies and innovative approaches to not only encourage prevention measures against COVID-19, but also to increase survival rates, diminish mortality rates, and ultimately improve the health outcomes of ethnic and racial minorities.

Keywords: African Americans; COVID-19; death rate; health disparity; health promotion; incidence rate; racial.

Abstract

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