Quantifying inequities in COVID-19 vaccine distribution over time by social vulnerability, race and ethnicity, and location: A population-level analysis in St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri.

BACKGROUND: Equity in vaccination coverage is a cornerstone for a successful public health response to COVID-19. To deepen understanding of the extent to which vaccination coverage compares with initial strategies for equitable vaccination, we explore primary vaccine series and booster rollout over time and by race/ethnicity, social vulnerability, and geography. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We analyzed data from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services on all COVID-19 vaccinations administered across 7 counties in the St. Louis region and 4 counties in the Kansas City region. We compared rates of receiving the primary COVID-19 vaccine series and boosters relative to time, race/ethnicity, zip-code-level Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), vaccine location type, and COVID-19 disease burden. We adapted a well-established tool for measuring inequity-the Lorenz curve-to quantify inequities in COVID-19 vaccination relative to these key metrics. Between 15 December 2020 and 15 February 2022, 1,763,036 individuals completed the primary series and 872,324 received a booster. During early phases of the primary series rollout, Black and Hispanic individuals from high SVI zip codes were vaccinated at less than half the rate of White individuals from low SVI zip codes, but rates increased over time until they were higher than rates in White individuals after June 2021; Asian individuals maintained high levels of vaccination throughout. Increasing vaccination rates in Black and Hispanic communities corresponded with periods when more vaccinations were offered at small community-based sites such as pharmacies rather than larger health systems and mass vaccination sites. Using Lorenz curves, zip codes in the quartile with the lowest rates of primary series completion accounted for 19.3%, 18.1%, 10.8%, and 8.8% of vaccinations while representing 25% of the total population, cases, deaths, or population-level SVI, respectively. When tracking Gini coefficients, these disparities were greatest earlier during rollout, but improvements were slow and modest and vaccine disparities remained across all metrics even after 1 year. Patterns of disparities for boosters were similar but often of much greater magnitude during rollout in fall 2021. Study limitations include inherent limitations in the vaccine registry dataset such as missing and misclassified race/ethnicity and zip code variables and potential changes in zip code population sizes since census enumeration. CONCLUSIONS: Inequities in the initial COVID-19 vaccination and booster rollout in 2 large US metropolitan areas were apparent across racial/ethnic communities, across levels of social vulnerability, over time, and across types of vaccination administration sites. Disparities in receipt of the primary vaccine series attenuated over time during a period in which sites of vaccination administration diversified, but were recapitulated during booster rollout. These findings highlight how public health strategies from the outset must directly target these deeply embedded structural and systemic determinants of disparities and track equity metrics over time to avoid perpetuating inequities in healthcare access.

An Observational Study of the Association Between Exposure to Vacant Building Demolitions and Elevated Blood Lead Levels in Children Under Six in St Louis City.

CONTEXT: St Louis City has been demolishing vacant buildings at an increasing rate. Demolition can cause lead dust spread, and childhood lead exposure can have negative effects on cognition, growth, and development. Previous studies show an association between exposure to multiple demolitions and elevated blood lead levels (EBLLs) in children, but St Louis City does not monitor the effects of demolitions on children's blood lead levels. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to measure the association between exposure to demolitions and EBLLs in children younger than 6 years in St Louis City from 2017 to 2020. DESIGN/SETTING/PARTICIPANTS: We analyzed blood lead testing data for children 0 to 72 months of age (n = 22 192) and proximity to demolitions. Exposure was the presence of demolitions within 400 ft of a child's address in the 33 days before their first lead test. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: We used logistic regression to test the association between proximity to demolition and EBLLs (≥5 µg/dL). RESULTS: The percentage of children living in proximity to 1 or more demolitions was slightly higher among those with EBLLs (n = 21; 1.3%) than among those without EBLLs (n = 250; 1.2%). However, after adjusting for age, sex, year home was built, season, neighborhood socioeconomic percentile, and neighborhood racial composition, the odds of EBLLs were not significantly different for children exposed to 1 or more demolitions (OR = 0.82; 95% CI, 0.5-1.25) compared with exposed to zero demolitions. CONCLUSIONS: Although this study found no association between exposure to demolitions and EBLLs, results should be interpreted with caution, given numerous limitations. Given the consequences of childhood lead exposure, it is recommended that St Louis City conduct a similar analysis on demolitions conducted after 2020 using systematically collected demolition dates. Targeted testing or soil and air monitoring could also be informative.