The COVID-19 pandemic prompted rapid and innovative policymaking around the world at the national, regional, and local levels. The projects below seek to document and characterize new and expanded local U.S. pandemic-era policies, with the aim of better understanding how policy variation and implementation have impacted health and health disparities.
Projects
The U.S. COVID-19 County Policy (UCCP) Database
A collaboration between UCSF and the Louisiana Public Health Institute, the goal of this study is to create a national database of local COVID-19-related public health and social policies and to test the hypothesis that these policies have affected racial and socioeconomic disparities in mental health and healthcare utilization. The UCCP database seeks to collect systematic, comparable information on county and state policy responses to COVID-19 and aims to provide a reliable record of what local governments have done in response to the pandemic. The policies collected in the database have been grouped into three categories 1) closure and containment policies (e.g., bar and restaurant closures), 2) economic response policies (e.g., housing support), and 3) public health policies (e.g., mask mandates).
We are gathering county- and state-level policy data for 2020-2021 for a nationwide sample of over 300 counties (see list here), selected to ensure coverage of over half of the U.S. population in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., as well as diversity in racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and urban/rural composition. We will then examine which local COVID-19-related policies contributed to or ameliorated pandemic-related disparities in mental health, health behaviors, and healthcare utilization by linking the policy database with national health data that provide individual-level information on self-reported psychological distress, smoking, alcohol use, and illicit drug use. The project involves partnering with an advisory board of policy stakeholders to ensure this work is relevant and has maximum impact.
Funding: NIMH U01; PCORI award
Relevant Materials: Data Collection and Interpretation Guide
Webinar Recording: COVID Consortium Meeting
Featured Publications:
- The U.S. COVID-19 County Policy Database: A Novel Resource to Support Pandemic-Related Research. BMC Public. 2022 October. Hamad, Rita, Kristin A. Lyman, Feng Lin, Madelaine F. Modrow, Pelin Ozluk, Kristen M. J. Azar, Amie Goodin, et al. PubMed
- Publicly Available Data: The datasets used for the current study are available to any investigator at openICPSR, a service of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research: https://doi.org/10.3886/E180482V1.
- Characterizing the Landscape of Safety Net Programs and Policies in California during the COVID-19 Pandemic. IJERPH. 2022. Jackson KE, Yeb J, Gosliner W, Fernald LCH, Hamad R. PubMed
- Publicly Available Data: https://github.com/SPHERE-UCSF/CA_COVID-19_Policy_Landscape
Pandemic-Related Stressors and Health Disparities
California was at the forefront of instituting new social and economic policies to help families, including increased CalFresh benefits and stimulus checks. While these additional social supports helped, they could not eliminate all of the new stressors families faced during the pandemic. In addition to anxiety around the disease itself, school closures, lockdowns, and employment disruptions put stress on caregivers and children.
Funding: NIMH U01, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), Tipping Point
Featured Publications:
- Pandemic-related socioeconomic disruptions and adverse health outcomes: a cross-sectional study of female caregivers. BMC Public Health. 2022 October Brown, E.M., Fernald, L.C., Hamad, R. et al. PubMed
- Social and Economic Factors Related to Healthcare Delay Among Low-Income Families During COVID-19: Results from the ACCESS Observational Study. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. Hoskote, Mekhala, et al. 2022 November. PubMed
- The Pent-Up Demand for Breastfeeding Among US Women: Trends After COVID-19 Shelter-in-Place. American Journal of Public Health. Hamad, R., Collin, D., Gemmill, A., Jackson, K., Karasek, D. PubMed