Showing How and Why U.S. Communities are Vulnerable
The Challenge
Not all communities are impacted by COVID-19 in the same way. Federal, state and local decision makers need better data to plan, prepare and respond to the negative health, social, and economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.
Our Approach
In March 2020, we built the COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index (CCVI) to assess the expected negative impact of a COVID-19 outbreak for every state, county, and census tract in the United States, so that services and resources can be targeted more effectively. Since then, it has been used by a wide variety of policy makers and organizations across the US.
Key Results
- Our CCVI has been recognized by the CDC as a resource for federal, state, and local responders.
- Official COVID-19 vaccine allocation guidelines by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine recommend the use of our CCVI to prioritize vulnerable populations and regions in deploying vaccines.
- In partnership with Vanguard Charitable, our CCVI has been integrated into a mapping tool that allows donors to search for charities based on a community’s vulnerability to COVID-19 and other factors.
- Southern Bancorp, a Community Development Financial Institution headquartered in rural Arkansas, is using our CCVI to determine eligibility for its COVID-19 Business Continuity Grants program — ensuring that its resources are targeted to communities most in need of support.
COVID-19 has reached nearly every corner of American life, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives and impacting millions more. We have seen dramatic differences in the impact of this pandemic on vulnerable communities — those that may not be able to mitigate the social, economic, or health-related consequences of the virus without additional support.
In order to identify those vulnerable communities in advance and shape the public response, in March 2020 we developed a modular, hyper-local index, the COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index (CCVI), which the CDC is now utilizing as a public health resource. The CCVI allows us to pinpoint our response to precisely where communities are vulnerable, so we can determine why and how to best respond and support them.
To date, our CCVI data and analysis has uncovered critical findings on viral spread, impact of the pandemic, and the public response:
People living in vulnerable communities are two times as likely to have died from COVID-19 as those in non-vulnerable communities.
The virus spreads at a faster rate in vulnerable communities.
More vulnerable communities are less likely to be socially distancing, likely due to structural inequalities.
Even within vulnerable communities, racial disparities exist: rural Black Americans are 2.7 times as likely to be living in a vulnerable area with no testing sites and increasing deaths, compared to all rural Americans.
The CCVI helps a range of partners — state and local governments, public health departments, community based organizations, philanthropic organizations, and others — develop data-driven responses to assist vulnerable communities. Our partners are currently using the CCVI to guide the allocation of resources and services; prioritize interventions such as contact tracing, testing and supported isolation; allocate vaccinations to the right neighborhoods; and analyze the impact of the pandemic through the lens of vulnerability and inequity.