COVID-19 has affected all populations across the United States and was the third leading cause of death in 2020. However, studies have consistently shown that disease burden has disproportionately fallen on racial/ethnic minority populations, and that there have been periods during the pandemic when incidence and death rates in rural areas have exceeded that of urban populations. Much of the research on geographic and racial/ethnic disparities have been conducted on data from early to mid 2020, but it is especially important to examine disparities during the pandemic's peak. In particular, December 2020-January 2021 was a time of hospitalizations and deaths following the surge of cases surrounding the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays that in many rural and urban areas stretched hospital resources to capacity and may have diminished quality of care. Therefore, our overarching goal was to assess differences in mortality rates across the rural-urban continuum and across racial/ethnic composition and to identify area-level factors associated with COVID-19 morality rates during the peak of the pandemic (December 2020-January 2021).

Publications

• COVID-19 Mortality Rates Across Noncore, Micropolitan, and Metropolitan Counties by Community Characteristics, December 2020-January 2021
  Policy Brief
  RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
  Date: 01/2023
  This policy brief examines differences in COVID-19 mortality rates across rural-urban designations and stratifications by geography, county-level sociodemographic factors, and county-level healthcare factors.
• Spatial Clustering of COVID-19 Mortality Rates Across Counties and by Noncore, Micropolitan, and Metropolitan County Characteristics, December 2020–January 2021
  Policy Brief
  RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
  Date: 06/2023
  This policy brief identifies spatial clusters of high COVID-19 mortality rates across counties in the United States between December 2020 and January 2021 and describes the characteristics of counties with high COVID-19 mortality rates.