Consortium Members
Members of the SBE COVID Consortium have received multi-year funding awards from the National Institutes of Health. Their research is enhancing our understanding of how the pandemic has influenced a variety of social factors, including parenthood, education, substance use, access to healthcare, and economic recovery. All projects share a common research aim of understanding the pandemic’s impact on minorities and underserved populations.
Large-scale disruptions and school / community resources: Children’s longitudinal health and education outcomes using linked administrative data
Brian Elbel, New York University School of Medicine
Amy Schwartz, University of Delaware
“We’ve observed a nuanced view of which children faced greater COVID risk at school. Protective behaviors such as vaccine take-up or masking incentives were responsive to school environments (e.g., density, ventilation).”– Amy Ellen Schwartz
Evaluating the health and economic impacts of COVID-19 and policy responses
Bruce Weinberg, The Ohio State University
“Some policymakers took a Las Vegas approach—what happens in Las Vegas says in Las Vegas. We know that’s not true for COVID-19. The virus [and pandemic-related policies] has the ability to impact transmission and mortality rates outside of the original county, state, or other geographic area.” — Bruce Weinberg
The impact of telehealth on diabetes management in a safety-net health system during the COVID-19 pandemic
Cameron Kaplan, University of Southern California
“Telehealth made a real difference in helping patients with diabetes stay connected to care—especially when in-person visits weren’t possible.” — Cameron Kaplan
Childcare, device use, and parental wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic
Claire Kamp Dush, University of Minnesota
Ann Meier, University of Minnesota
“Device use has permeated parenting time, and parental well-being has suffered, especially among parents of young children. This makes strategies to put the phone down especially important.” — Ann Meier
Trajectories of health by early pandemic employment conditions
Colter Mitchell, University of Michigan
Helen Meier, University of Michigan
Christopher Monk, University of Michigan
“It’s the opposite of what you might expect; two years later, young adults who were working during the pandemic had higher levels of depression than those who were unemployed during the pandemic.” — Colter Mitchell
COVID-19 pandemic mitigation, community economic and social vulnerability, and opioid use disorder: Updates
Elaine Hill, University of Rochester
Meredith Adams, Wake Forest University
“When we restrict to 19-64 year olds on Medicaid and exclude dual eligibles, we find high agreement between the Medicaid NDI death information and the death information contained in the Medicaid TAF enrollment files. This indicates that research teams, with some data cleaning steps, can use the vital status contained in the TAF enrollment data even if they don’t have access to the linked NDI.” — Elaine Hill
The well-being of frontline workers following the COVID-19 pandemic
Emily Wiemers, Syracuse University
“If we want to study the impact of social policy during the pandemic, we need to understand family support. Understanding policy without understanding family support is missing half the picture.” — I-Fen Lin
Increases in cardiac mortality 2020-2024: Deadly aftershocks of the pandemic
John Hsu, Massachusetts General Hospital
“The pandemic precipitated a series of shocks to the health care system, which led to more cardiac deaths. The increased mortality has persisted for years after the pandemic onset.” – John Hsu
Changes in mortality among Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare beneficiaries associated with the COVID-19 pandemic
Karen Joynt Maddox, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
“COVID was associated with higher mortality but lower readmissions for Medicare beneficiaries with AMI, suggesting both short- and long-term effects of the pandemic on older adults with cardiovascular disease.” – Karen E. Joynt Maddox
Mitigating effects of telehealth uptake on disparities in maternal care access, quality, outcomes, and expenditures during the COVID-19 pandemic
Peiyin Hung, University of South Carolina
Xiaoming Li, University of South Carolina
“Telehealth policy matters—it is not just paperwork. When states reimburse a full range of telehealth services, our study found that birthing people and their providers have more flexible options for care settings.” Peiyin Hung
A national neighborhood data resource to understand inequities in the health and socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 in the United States
Philippa Clarke, University of Michigan
Grace Noppert, University of Michigan
“Ever since John Snow made the link between the Broad Street pump and the outbreak, and epidemic, of cholera in the 1800s in London, we know that place is really important to understanding pandemics and their outcome.” — Philippa Clarke
A new database to measure the association between income, race, and mortality: Inequality in longevity during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic
Raj Chetty, Harvard University
“COVID-19 set back almost two decades of progress in racial equality of longevity in the United States. Will we be able to snap back to a more equal society? Or are many of the [life expectancy] changes that happened in 2020 going to persist and continue to impact the longevity of more disadvantaged communities?” – Michael Stepner
Understanding the effects of county- and state-level pandemic-era policy changes on behavioral health in the U.S.
Rita Hamad, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
“Evidence suggests that county-level policies, especially containment and closure policies, may have played a role in improving behavioral health among adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.” —Emily Dore
State policy contexts, COVID-19 response policies, and mental health among U.S. working-age adults
Shannon Monnat, Syracuse University
“States adopting more conservative sets of policies exhibit worse mental health among their working-age residents, suggesting that the consequences of state policymaking are not limited to physical health and mortality outcomes.” — Iliya Gutin
Integrating multiple data sources toward building up a surveillance infrastructure
Yajuan Si, University of Michigan
“Combining multiple datasets via sound statistical methods and open-source tools, such as multilevel regression and poststratification via our developed interface, provides an encouraging and straightforwardly operational surveillance system for disease monitoring. ” – Yajuan Si
Pilot Grantees
Pilot grants from the Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center foster innovative measurement of social, behavioral, and economic indicators that are important correlates and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pilot grants address COVID-19 impact on health disparities and vulnerable populations, foster new collaborations across research teams, and engage researchers from underrepresented groups in the consortium.
Year 5
Optimism and risk perceptions in response to rapidly evolving health risks
Anna Chupak, Ph.D, University of South Carolina
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Medicaid coverage, opioid use disorder treatment, and medication access during the COVID-19 pandemic
Aniket Patil, University of Rochester
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Chronic condition ascertainment in Medicare: A pre to post COVID-19 onset comparison
RJ Waken, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Disparities in pregnancy-related outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic
Elaine Hill, University of Rochester
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Improving survey measures of time and money help given and received due to hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic
I-Fen Lin, University of Missouri
Judith A. Seltzer, University of California, Los Angeles
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Year 4
Customized optimal use of telehealth for chronic care management and disparity reduction: A machine learning and clustering approach
Jessica Cao, University of Wisconsin-Madison
This project aims to understand the role of telehealth and patterns of telehealth use for chronic care management and disparity reduction in care outcomes, as well as the effects of policies and policy rollbacks.
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Childhood material hardship, adolescent neuroinflammation, and brain connectivity as predictors of young adult mental health during COVID-19: A Longitudinal Birth Cohort Study
Christopher Monk, University of Michigan
We are investigating how early-life adversity influences neuroinflammation, brain connectivity, and mental health vulnerability during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Trust in the health system and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the United States
Sharifa Nasreen and Victor Puac-Polanco, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University
This study aims to examine trust in the health system and vaccine hesitancy related to COVID-19 vaccines in the US adult population using data from the Health Reform Monitoring Survey 2021.
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Spatial and social disparities in subjective and objective transportation accessibility to healthcare services and their relationship to long COVID
Sicheng Wang and Xueying Yang, University of South Carolina
This study seeks to examine the associations between transportation accessibility and the prevalence and severity of long COVID across space, aiming to inform more effective and efficient healthcare strategies.
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Year 3
Quantifying how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated maternal health disparities during continuous postpartum enrollment in Medicaid
Elaine Hill, University of Rochester
This project seeks to understand how the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) policy, specifically the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCA) that led to continuous coverage for Medicaid-covered births up to 1 year postpartum, affected maternal health disparities and late postpartum maternal mortality.
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Improving survey measures of time and money help given and received due to hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic
I-Fen Lin, Bowling Green State University; Judith A. Seltzer, UCLA
This project will develop a coding scheme and code open-ended responses to questions about help given and received in the 2020 Health and Retirement Study (HRS).
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
The impact of tele-critical care on rural-urban disparities among hospitalized critically ill patients during the COVID-19 pandemic
Uchenna R. Ofoma, Washington University in St. Louis
This project seeks to investigate the patterns and effects of patient-level utilization of telemedicine among hospitalized patients during the COVID-19 pandemic period.
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Examining the effects of the expiration of the 2021 expanded CTC and SNAP benefit on perinatal health: Quasi-experimental evidence from a national survey
Guangyi Wang, Harvard University
This project will evaluate the impacts of policy rollbacks during the COVID-19 pandemic on perinatal health, a pivotal life stage that profoundly influences an individual’s lifelong well-being.
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Year 2
What is long COVID? Quantifying the enduring and disparate effects of COVID-19
Adibah Abdulhadi, Ohio State University
Kurt Lavetti, Ohio State University
This project aims to quantify the recovery patterns of long COVID and identify potential disparities related to long COVID.
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Investigating vaccine hesitancy and factors that build vaccine confidence among refugees in Rhode Island, U.S.
Julie Keller, Steven Cohen, Molly Greaney, and Erica Liebermann, University of Rhode Island
“Participants across all three regions identified feelings of mistrust or beliefs of malicious intent surrounding the COVID-19 virus vaccine… beliefs that the vaccine was not legitimate or that it was fake or that the vaccine had racist underpinnings.” — Julie C. Keller
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Using place visitation big data to improve health measure estimation at the census tract level
Zhenlong Li, Penn State University
“From all the models, we can see that including visitation data with social determinants of health data improves how well we are able to predict health outcomes.” — Zhenlong Li
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Changes in trust in health systems, interactions with the healthcare system, and health-related behaviors and household finances since the COVID-19 pandemic: Preliminary analysis
Caroline Rudisill, University of South Carolina
“People are increasing their likelihood of using [pharmacy-based] services [compared to pre-pandemic]. Whereas with phone consultations and remote consultations, people are self-reporting no increase; we saw an increase in 2020 compared to prior to the pandemic, but we don’t see a sustained growth.” — Caroline Rudisill
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
How the pandemic and federal exclusion harmed and NY state’s Excluded Workers Fund helped immigrant families’ health and wellbeing
Robert Courtney Smith, City University of New York
“One of the things we found is that there are accumulated health debts among immigrants that blew up in the pandemic; people were undertreated already for things, or didn’t get any treatment, and then got sick.” — Robert Courtney Smith
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Year 1
Community support, identity centrality, and state policy: Associations with healthcare discrimination in sexual and gender minority–partnered adults
Claire Kamp Dush, University of Minnesota
“Sexual minorities who perceived that their community was more supportive reported less healthcare discrimination, but we also found that people who are transgender or nonbinary had higher reports of discrimination—suggesting that perceived support may not be as protective for transgender and nonbinary folks.” — Claire Kamp Dush
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Enhancing the utility of the National Wellbeing Survey to understand rural-urban differences in the impacts of COVID-19 on adult psychological wellbeing and substance use
Shannon Monnat, Syracuse University
The pilot project will expand the next wave of the National Wellbeing Survey to oversample rural populations in order to measure effects by rural-urban variation.
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)
Examination of health disparity and its social determinants for vulnerable populations of COVID transmission
Yajuan Si, University of Michigan; Cameron Kaplan, University of Southern California
This project will validate expand a measure of asymptomatic COVID-19 transmission to a new population.
Funded By
Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC)