Amplifying Youth Voice to Promote Black Youth Mental Health Through Policy in Georgia.

There is an unmet need for mental health policies that are culturally competent, engaging, and equitable for Black youth. This paper describes a youth-adult partnership advisory council approach to identify, assess, and measure the effectiveness of innovative policy solutions to promote Black youth mental health in Georgia.

Opportunities and Challenges to Advance Health Equity Using Digital Health Tools in Underserved Communities in Southeast US: A Mixed Methods Study.

Introduction: Over the last 30 years, the adoption of health information technology and digital health tools (DHTs) into the US health system has been instrumental to improving access to care, especially for people living in rural, underserved, and underrepresented communities. Despite widespread adoption of DHTs by primary care clinicians, documented challenges have contributed to inequitable use and benefit. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated rapid adoption of DHTs, accelerated by state and federal policy changes, in order to meet patient needs and ensure access to care.

Variation in Reporting of the Race and Ethnicity of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths Across US States: April 12, 2020, and November 9, 2020.

Despite growing evidence that COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting communities of color, state-reported racial/ethnic data are insufficient to measure the true impact.We found that between April 12, 2020, and November 9, 2020, the number of US states reporting COVID-19 confirmed cases by race and ethnicity increased from 25 to 50 and 15 to 46, respectively. However, the percentage of confirmed cases reported with missing race remained high at both time points (29% on April 12; 23% on November 9).

Population-Level Disparities in COVID-19: Measuring the Independent Association of the Proportion of Black Population on COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in US Counties.

Context: There is a need to understand population race and ethnicity disparities in the context of sociodemographic risk factors in the US experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective: Determine the association between county-level proportion of non-Hispanic Black (NHB) on county COVID-19 case and death rates and observe how this association was influenced by county sociodemographic and health care infrastructure characteristics.

Design And Setting: This was an ecologic analysis of US counties as of September 20, 2020, that employed stepwise construction of linear and negative binomial regression models.

Percentage of Black Population and Primary Care Shortage Areas Associated with Higher COVID-19 Case and Death Rates in Georgia Counties.

Objectives: We hypothesized that the proportion of Black individuals in a county would be associated with higher rates of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases and deaths, even after accounting for other high-risk socioecologic factors such as poverty, population density, and household crowding, and uninsured rates. We also expected that counties designated as primary care health professional shortage areas (PCHPSAs) would be associated with higher COVID-19 death rates, and the lack of primary care access would exacerbate racial disparities in death rates. We undertook this study to test these hypotheses and discern the independent effects of racial composition, socioecologic characteristics, and healthcare system factors on COVID-19 cases and deaths in Georgia counties.