Data Disparities Supplement to Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research

The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which causes a respiratory illness known as Coronavirus Disease 2019(COVID-19), has caused a global pandemic of unprecedented proportion. As of April 28, 2020, there were over3 million confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, including over 1 million cases within the United States. Inaddition, there has been over 213,000 COVID-19 related deaths globally, including 57,000 deaths in the UnitedStates. The COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately impacting racial/ethnic minority communities, as well asthose who face socioeconomic disadvantage. Reasons for this disproportionate impact among racial/ethnicminorities include a greater burden of the chronic health conditions that place persons at risk of severe diseaseand death from COVID-19, poorer access to primary and specialty care, an increased risk of contractingCOVID-19 due to barriers to practicing social distancing behaviors, and shortages of testing resources indisadvantaged communities. This pandemic has presented unprecedented needs for timely access to health-related data. The State of Maryland and surrounding regions including the District of Columbia are fortunate tohave a well-functioning health information exchange, CRISP. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CRISP datahave the potential to serve an essential function in tracking and understanding the care and outcomes ofCOVID-19 infections. This resource would be unique among COVID registries in that it includes all healthevents and findings among the entire population of a geographic area, regardless where a health service wasdelivered. As such, it is ideally suited to address questions of health disparities. The Specific Aims of thisadministrative supplement are to (1) develop the CRISP data resource as a unique, population-based COVID-19 registry on the highly secure Johns Hopkins Precision Medicine Analytics Platform, and (2) evaluateCOVID-19 care and outcomes by race, neighborhood and socioeconomic status such that targeted strategiescan be deployed to reduce emerging disparities.