Association of Neighborhood-Level Factors and COVID-19 Infection Patterns in Philadelphia
Led by PISC Senior Scholar Mary Regina Boland, MA, PhD, this study used informatics approaches to better understand the role of individual and community risk factors for COVID-19. In particular, it developed a method to integrate COVID-19 data with multiple neighborhood-level factors from the American Community Survey and opendataphilly.org, after which it assessed the spatial association between neighborhood-level factors and the frequency of COVID-19 positivity. The study found that more Hispanic/Latinx neighborhoods and neighborhoods with a higher percentage of high school graduates were more likely to have higher COVID-19 rates, while more White neighborhoods were less likely. With these results, the study was able to demonstrate the effectiveness of informatics-based approaches in informing future public health efforts.