key: cord-0838031-8wcuarae authors: Ramprasad, Aarya; Qureshi, Fahad; Jones, Bridgette Jones L. title: Contributions to Health Disparities Observed in the COVID19 Pandemic date: 2020-10-31 journal: Journal of the National Medical Association DOI: 10.1016/j.jnma.2020.09.029 sha: 69d263cefe350580a4062576cd12d1f8fbb62bb8 doc_id: 838031 cord_uid: 8wcuarae nan Exacerbated by systemic health disparities, the burdens of COVID-19 disproportionately fall on Florida's underserved communities, including African American and Hispanic populations. For instance, though comprising only 15% of Manatee County's population, Latinx individuals are 25% of all COVID cases. The Multicultural Health Institute (MHI) is responding with grassroots efforts to address the intersection of these disparities with Florida's COVID-19 crisis. MHI's efforts include the virtual expansion of an existing community coalition, consisting of health experts, community partners, social and faith based organizations, volunteers, and students, to generate solution-oriented interventions. Guided by timely data acquisition and information sharing on the community web based dashboard, this coalition is deployed to identify health needs, promote collaborative inclusion, and create tools for health prevention and education. Using local zip code case data, MHI identifies real-time data shifts and targets afflicted areas with advanced care and support. Weekly Zoom calls update partners in these shifts, as well as in available social services and PPE. "Safekeepers", a cadre of specially trained community health workers, interface with and connect vulnerable BIPOC, homeless, LGBTQ and other populations to health, mental health and psychosocial resources. The Links Phone Bank of dedicated health and psychosocial professionals serve as a strong reservoir to reinforce care navigation and coordination efforts. MHI also advocates for equity in health data collection. In Sarasota County alone, 40-50% of COVID cases lack race or ethnicity data. A community coalition can overcome the obstacle of missing data to identify trends absent from standard data analysis. To date, these efforts have reached over five thousand families and distributed 11,000 conventional and hand made masks. Resources and coalition-building strategies adaptable to any NMA region are provided, linking these efforts to the broader struggle to resolve health inequities among vulnerable populations. More information can be found at: https:// resiliencesystem.org/dashboards/sarasota-county/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnma.2020.09.028 Aarya Ramprasad, Fahad Qureshi, Bridgette Jones L. Jones, MD. University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine Background: Disproportionate impact of COVID19 has been observed throughout the United States among black and brown communities. Wealthier societies have better health outcomes while on the lower end, they are at higher risk of chronic disease. 1 This is related to racial divisions, facilitated by governmental redlining. 2 We aimed to determine social determinants associated with COVID19 disparities in Kansas City, Missouri. Methods: We identified the number of COVID19 cases per zip code based on data published from the KC, MO Health Department website on May 5, 2020. Next, we found the number of primary health care providers (internal medicine, pediatrics, and family medicine) in individual zip codes within KC, MO via Healthgrades. Finally, we obtained primary demographic information and median income data via Zipdata and the KC Business Journal website, respectively. Results: Analyzing COVID19 cases vs median income, with a correlation coefficient of .779 and P-value of 0.023, showed that zipcodes with median incomes of w60,000 dollars had 5 or less cases while median incomes of w25,000 dollars had on average 30 cases. The relationship between socioeconomic factors, COVID19 cases and healthcare providers was analyzed via a T-test with the following results: Conclusion: COVID19 cases in KC were related to income level. As median income grows, the health risk gap becomes smaller. We also observed differences in the number of health care providers in relation to COVID19 cases. Majority black communities tended to have less access to primary care providers; being white and having a higher median income creates a large advantage over redlined minority communities. Background: HIV is a life-threatening opportunistic infection. Despite advancements in HIV treatment and prevention, rates of incidence have been increasing particularly in young African-American males. Recent studies suggest that barbershops serve as effective venues for hypertension and sexual health education in this population. For this study our primary objective was to assess the efficacy of a minority medical student led barbershop-based intervention in improving HIV knowledge and misperceptions. Description: Our intervention consisted of minority medical students recruiting customers in a barbershop in Detroit, MI to participate in a survey that assessed their knowledge of HIV, PrEP, self-perceptions of HIV risk as well as risk behaviors. They were then given a brief PowerPoint presentation to educate them on various aspects of HIV such as its prevalence, treatment, progression, common myths and methods to prevent transmission. After the presentation, participants were asked to recomplete the survey. Outcomes: Approximately 35 participants completed the biographical survey and 26 participants completed the pre and post-intervention survey. Of the 35 participants, 75.86% (22) had not heard of PrEP and none admitted to taking PrEP before. Participants whom completed the pre and post-intervention surveys showed improved knowledge of HIV, PrEP and incidence rates of HIV. Interestingly we found that a statistically significant number of participants agree that a barbershop is an appropriate venue to educate men on preventing sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDs (p¼0.027). Conclusions: Our study not only helped support minorities in training but also demonstrates that our medical student led intervention was effective at improving HIV education. Despite our small sample size, we found significant support to show that barbershops are an appropriate venue for recruiting African American males and holding this type of intervention. We believe our success was achieved in part by the involvement of minority health care providers and medical students demonstrating the importance of diversity inclusion among health care providers. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnma.2020.09.032 ArcGIS Dashboards. Mid-American Regional Council How Redlining Communities Affects Health Sarah undefined Simon, Emily undefined Zimmerman, and Kim undefined Lux KCMO COVID-19 Totals j KCMO.gov -City of Kansas City Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America How Redlining Communities Affects Health Income, Poverty, and Health Inequality