Race and ethnicity in the COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium: demographics, treatments, and outcomes, an international observational registry study
File version
Version of Record (VoR)
Author(s)
Thomson, DA
Fanning, J
Rosenberger, D
Barnett, A
White, NM
Suen, J
Fraser, JF
Li Bassi, G
Cho, SM
Dalton, HJ
Laffey, J
Brodie, D
Fan, E
Torres, A
et al.
Griffith University Author(s)
Primary Supervisor
Other Supervisors
Editor(s)
Date
Size
File type(s)
Location
Abstract
Background: Improving access to healthcare for ethnic minorities is a public health priority in many countries, yet little is known about how to incorporate information on race, ethnicity, and related social determinants of health into large international studies. Most studies of differences in treatments and outcomes of COVID-19 associated with race and ethnicity are from single cities or countries. Methods: We present the breadth of race and ethnicity reported for patients in the COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium, an international observational cohort study from 380 sites across 32 countries. Patients from the United States, Australia, and South Africa were the focus of an analysis of treatments and in-hospital mortality stratified by race and ethnicity. Inclusion criteria were admission to intensive care for acute COVID-19 between January 14th, 2020, and February 15, 2022. Measurements included demographics, comorbidities, disease severity scores, treatments for organ failure, and in-hospital mortality. Results: Seven thousand three hundred ninety-four adults met the inclusion criteria. There was a wide variety of race and ethnicity designations. In the US, American Indian or Alaska Natives frequently received dialysis and mechanical ventilation and had the highest mortality. In Australia, organ failure scores were highest for Aboriginal/First Nations persons. The South Africa cohort ethnicities were predominantly Black African (50%) and Coloured* (28%). All patients in the South Africa cohort required mechanical ventilation. Mortality was highest for South Africa (68%), lowest for Australia (15%), and 30% in the US. Conclusions: Disease severity was higher for Indigenous ethnicity groups in the US and Australia than for other ethnicities. Race and ethnicity groups with longstanding healthcare disparities were found to have high acuity from COVID-19 and high mortality. Because there is no global system of race and ethnicity classification, researchers designing case report forms for international studies should consider including related information, such as socioeconomic status or migration background. *Note: “Coloured” is an official, contemporary government census category of South Africa and is a term of self-identification of race and ethnicity of many citizens of South Africa.
Journal Title
International Journal for Equity in Health
Conference Title
Book Title
Edition
Volume
22
Issue
Thesis Type
Degree Program
School
Publisher link
Patent number
Funder(s)
Grant identifier(s)
Rights Statement
Rights Statement
© The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons. org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Item Access Status
Note
Access the data
Related item(s)
Subject
Persistent link to this record
Citation
Griffee, MJ; Thomson, DA; Fanning, J; Rosenberger, D; Barnett, A; White, NM; Suen, J; Fraser, JF; Li Bassi, G; Cho, SM; Dalton, HJ; Laffey, J; Brodie, D; Fan, E; Torres, A; Chiumello, D; Elhazmi, A; Hodgson, C; Ichiba, S; Luna, C; Murthy, S; Nichol, A; Ng, PY; Ogino, M; Marwali, E; Grasselli, G; Bartlett, R; Burrell, A; Elhadi, M; Motos, A; Barbé, F; Zanella, A, Race and ethnicity in the COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium: demographics, treatments, and outcomes, an international observational registry study, International Journal for Equity in Health, 2023, 22 , pp. 260