In an effort to reduce health disparities, California allocated COVID-19 vaccines with an emphasis on those communities rated lowest on an area-based socioeconomic measure.
Christopher Hoover and coauthors estimate that “vaccination rates increased by 28.4 percent, and more than 160,000 cases, 10,000 hospitalizations, and 670 deaths were averted because of the policy.”
However, they note, the policy did not eliminate disparities between more- and less-advantaged communities.
H. Joanna Jiang and coauthors compare changes in patient volume in rural and urban hospitals and find that “rural hospitals experienced more variability in patient volume, both up and down, than urban hospitals during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Yin Wang and coauthors explore the effects of a guaranteed payment to young adults in West Virginia for being fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
They find that young adults who were vaccinated as a result of the $100 incentive accounted for about 20 percent of all young adults who became vaccinated.
Examining Medicare pharmacy claims data, Katherine Wen and coauthors find that between January 2021 and April 2022, “urban counties [showed] greater use of Pfizer-BioNTech and rural counties less use of Pfizer-BioNTech for both first doses and booster doses.”
