NIH # R01MD016910

Hospital Systems Serving Health Disparity Populations (HSSHDPs) deliver needed services to racial and ethnic minorities and other underserved communities. HSSHDPs may experience long-term effects of natural and human-made disasters that affect health outcomes for populations they serve. The COVID-19 pandemic affected every US healthcare system and provided a unique opportunity to study effects of large-scale and long-term stressors on under-resourced systems serving vulnerable patient populations.

Using the disaster management cycle framework (mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery), this project proposes to conduct a mixed-methods study of the long-term effects of COVID-19 on US hospitals across four critical domains (quality, workforce, finances, innovation), focusing on HSSHDPs and health disparity populations they serve.

This project will be the first major national investigation of national disaster effects on HSSDHPs. This study will be significant in identifying HSSDHPs most and least affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and will deepen understanding of factors contributing to successes and challenges. The study will identify actionable best practices and challenges to HSSHDP operations before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.