Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Legacy of Slavery and COVID-19 Mortality in Southern U.S. States

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Wisdom, Well-Being, Win-Win (iConference 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((volume 14598))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 40 Accesses

Abstract

Public health experts have observed higher risks of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and death for some racial groups compared with others. Studies into racially disparate COVID-19 outcomes have concentrated on the medical and public health reasons for disparities, while other work has looked generally at historic slavery’s continuing effect on health. None has looked specifically at the link between COVID-19 outcomes and historical slavery. This study looks at the disparity between Black Non-Hispanic and White Non-Hispanic deaths by asking whether the American legacy of slavery contributes to racial disparity. Specifically, we interpret the regression coefficients in linear regressions that explore the relationship between slavery and COVID-19 mortality for Black and White Non-Hispanic Americans, while controlling for other demographic characteristics. This study finds statistically significant evidence that slavery, outlawed more than 150 years ago, nevertheless influences disease today by contributing to higher mortality among Black Americans and lower mortality among White Americans in selected counties of U.S. Southern states.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. World Health Organization Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard. https://covid19.who.int/. Accessed 13 Aug 2022

  2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death By Race/Ethnicity. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html. Accessed 13 Aug 2022

  3. Secretary’s Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for 2030 Report #2: Recommendations for Developing Objectives, Setting Priorities, Identifying Data Needs, and Involving Stakeholders for Healthy People 2030. https://www.healthypeople.gov/sites/default/files/Advisory_Committee_Objectives_for_HP2030_Report.pdf. Accessed 13 Aug 2022

  4. Institute of Medicine Committee on the Consequences of Uninsurance: Care Without Coverage: Too Little, Too Late. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Kramer, M.R., Black, N.C., Matthews, S.A., James, S.A: The legacy of slavery and contemporary declines in heart disease mortality in the U.S. South. SSM Popul. Health 3, 609–617 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Esenwa, C., Tshiswaka, D.I., Gebregziabher, M., Ovbiagele, B.: Historical slavery and modern-day stroke mortality in the United States stroke belt. Stroke 49, 465–469 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Dessie, Z.G., Zewotir, T.: Mortality-related risk factors of COVID-19: a systemic review and meta-analysis of 42 studies and 423,117 patients. BMC Infect. Dis. 21, 855 (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Underlying Medical Conditions Associated with Higher Risk for Severe COVID-19: Information for Healthcare Professionals. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-care/underlyingconditions.html. Accessed 13 Aug 2022

  9. Shah, P., et al.: Demographics, comorbidities and outcomes in hospitalized COVID-19 patients in rural southwest Georgia. Ann. Med. 52(7), 354–360 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Scannell, C.A., Oronce, C.I.A., Tsugawa, Y.: Association between county-level racial and ethnic characteristics and COVID-19 cases and deaths in the USA. J. Gen. Intern. Med. 35, 3126–3128 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Li, D., et al.: Identifying US county-level characteristics associated with high COVID-19 burden. BMC Publ. Health 21, 1007 (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Samuel, L.J., Gaskin, D.J., Trujillo, A.J., Szanton, S.L., Samuel, A., Slade, E.: Race, ethnicity, poverty and the social determinants of the coronavirus divide: U.S. county-level disparities and risk factors. BMC Publ. Health 21, 1250 (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  13. National Center for Health Statistics Provisional COVID-19 Deaths by County, and Race and Hispanic Origin. https://data.cdc.gov/d/k8wy-p9cg. Accessed 8 May 2022

  14. Xu, A., et al.: Race and ethnic minority, local pollution, and COVID-19 deaths in Texas. Sci. Rep. 12, 1002 (2022)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Jones, B.: The changing political geography of COVID-19 over the last two years. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/03/03/the-changing-political-geography-of-covid-19-over-the-last-two-years/. Accessed 13 Aug 2022

  16. Hill, L., Artiga, S.: COVID-19 cases and deaths by race/ethnicity: current data and changes over time. Kaiser Family Foundation. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/covid-19-cases-and-deaths-by-race-ethnicity-current-data-and-changes-over-time/. Accessed 13 Aug 2022

  17. Phelan, J.C., Link, B.G.: Controlling disease and creating disparities: a fundamental cause perspective. J. Gerontol. B Psychol. Sci. Soc. Sci. 60(2), 27–33 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Curtis, K.J., O’Connell, H.A.: Historical racial contexts and contemporary spatial differences in racial inequality. Spat. Demogr. 5, 73–97 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Reece, R.L.: Whitewashing slavery: legacy of slavery and white social outcomes. Soc. Probl. 67(2), 304–323 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Gabriel, R., Esposito, M., Ward, G., Lee, H., Hicken, M.T., Cunningham, D.: White health benefits of histories of enslavement: the case of opioid deaths. Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. Soc. Sci. 694(1), 142–156 (2021)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. U.S. Census Bureau 2016–2020 American Community Survey 5-Year Data. https://www.census.gov/data/developers/data-sets/acs-5year.html. Accessed 1 May 2022

  22. Manson, S., Schroeder, J. Van Riper, D., Kugler, T., Ruggles, S.: IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System: Version 16.0. IPUMS, Minneapolis (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Prener, C., Revord, C.: Areal: an R package for areal weighted interpolation. J. Open Source Softw. 4(37), 1221 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/. Accessed 13 May 2022

  25. Department of Health and human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services: Medicare Program; Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems for Acute Care Hospitals and the Long-Term Care Hospital Prospective Payment System and Proposed Policy Changes and Fiscal Year 2023 Rates (CMS-1771-P). Federal Register 87(90), 28108–28746 (2022)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Ghurye, J., Krings, G., Frias-Martinez, V.: A framework to model human behavior at large scale during natural disasters. In: IEEE International Conference on Mobile Data Management (MDM), vol. 1, pp. 18–27. IEEE (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Frias-Martinez, V., Virseda, V.: Cell phone analytics: scaling human behavior studies into the millions. Inf. Technol. Int. Dev. 9(2), 35 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Isaacman, S., Frias-Martinez, V., Frias-Martinez, E.: Modeling human migration patterns during drought conditions in La Guajira, Colombia. In: Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies, pp. 1–9, June 2018

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Maryland, College Park, UMD, College Park, USA

    Mary Dalrymple & Vanessa Frias-Martinez

Authors
  1. Mary Dalrymple
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Vanessa Frias-Martinez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vanessa Frias-Martinez .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. iSchool organization, Berlin, Germany

    Isaac Sserwanga

  2. University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

    Hideo Joho

  3. Jilin University, Changchun, China

    Jie Ma

  4. Stockholm University, Kista, Sweden

    Preben Hansen

  5. Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Dan Wu

  6. University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

    Masanori Koizumi

  7. University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Anne J. Gilliland

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Dalrymple, M., Frias-Martinez, V. (2024). The Legacy of Slavery and COVID-19 Mortality in Southern U.S. States. In: Sserwanga, I., et al. Wisdom, Well-Being, Win-Win. iConference 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14598. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57867-0_29

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57867-0_29

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-57866-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-57867-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation