Our inter-campus research lab studies COVID-19 pandemic-era disparities in health outcomes, with an eye toward producing policy-relevant evidence that can improve health and promote equity. We take pride in bridging academic research and public-health practice.
Our research emphasizes specific insights afforded by detailed, high-quality data. We seek to understand the pandemic’s consequences for population health by marshaling data on COVID-19 outcomes from multiple sources, including vital statistics, hospital/service data, surveys, wastewater surveillance, and social media. Our studies frequently link surveillance data with additional sources that characterize macro or geographic patterns of risk and resource.
Example areas of work:
Occupation
Our research on disparities in COVID-19 mortality across occupational sectors and occupation aims to guide and protect prioritization of vaccines for essential workers, and has been cited in several court cases involving workplace safety. Our research has been cited in the Supreme Court case involving the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate, presented to the National Vaccine Advisory Council, and featured by the New York Times.
Unreported COVID-19 deaths
It has been unclear whether discrepancies between excess mortality and COVID-19 mortality reflect unreported COVID-19 deaths or deaths due to the pandemic (such as hospital aversion). Our research, uniquely drawing upon time-series approaches, suggests that the former is true. In a widely-shared essay, our team wrote about implications of these findings to inform pandemic response resource allocation.