The COVID-19 pandemic is worsening health outcomes in the United States on a dizzying number of fronts. In the United States alone, as of November 24, 2020, the virus had infected more than 12 million people and killed more than 258,000. Other, more easily missed effects of the pandemic include poorer mental health outcomes, deferred medical care, and reduced access to nutritious foods. Communities of color have been hardest hit as a result of racism and their likelihood to be frontline workers and have preexisting health conditions.
Much scientific progress has been made in understanding the virus’s virology, transmission, and treatment. But many uncertainties remain. Total infections are breaking records on a near-daily basis, and colder weather will continue to drive more people into higher-risk indoor settings. As vaccines await emergency authorization, states will soon face the challenge of distributing a COVID-19 vaccine equitably with little federal support. And public health experts are anxiously watching the impact of a co-occurring influenza season.
Social unrest and political divisiveness are compounding these challenges. In October 2020 nearly twice as many people were unemployed compared with the number in February 2020, before the pandemic. Americans are more likely to report negative economic consequences stemming from COVID-19 than are residents of other high-income countries. The federal $600 weekly enhanced unemployment benefit expired at the end of July 2020, leaving roughly 30 million Americans without vital support—and it has not been extended to date.
The Unique Role Of Philanthropies
In the midst of this staggering need, philanthropies are filling the gap to provide critical funding for relief efforts, particularly for the most vulnerable communities in need of housing, food, mental health care, and social support services. Philanthropies have the potential to work around political stagnation and partisanship. They speak with an independent, trusted voice, earned from years of working alongside and supporting communities. And they can leverage these connections to generate, collect, and disseminate data and information that can inform grant-making and policy-making efforts and target direct services to achieve the greatest benefit possible.
The Value Of Grantmaker Research
The New York State Health Foundation (NYSHealth) is one such philanthropic organization that is meeting the unmet needs during the COVID-19 pandemic through targeted grant making. The foundation has distinguished its response through its longstanding practice of dedicating staff and resources specifically for research and data analysis. This personnel investment helps inform where the need is greatest and helps provide evidence and data for both grant making and grantees.
For example, NYSHealth recently analyzed new survey data from the US Census Bureau. These data measure household experiences with the pandemic in near real-time. With a new priority area focused on food and nutrition, the foundation pulled specific data from the survey to report food scarcity trends in New York State, identify high-need subsets of the state’s population, and benchmark New York’s food scarcity rates to those of other states. The results helped quantify anecdotal trends being reported in the field by the foundation’s grantees. For example, Hispanic and Black households were up to four times more likely to report not having enough food to eat, and food scarcity has increasingly affected households that did not struggle to access food prior to the pandemic. These trends have important implications for grantees running food assistance programs.
Analyzing Census data is hardly a novel practice. What makes the foundation’s approach unique is how the analysis brought key parties together. NYSHealth policy and research staff first connected with program officers, who reviewed preliminary data to inform the direction of the research project. Program officers then connected research staff with Hunger Solutions New York, a statewide anti-hunger organization and grantee, which provided input on how the data could best be analyzed and made useful as an advocacy tool. Using its on-the-ground experience, Hunger Solutions New York provided needed context for data patterns (for example, how a reduction in the number of school-based, free-meal distribution sites influenced how New Yorkers accessed free meals).
Hunger Solutions New York also used these data to strengthen its own messaging, including these data as part of its testimony to the state legislature. NYSHealth’s project culminated in an online report, providing findings on the impact of COVID-19 on New Yorkers’ food security, for use by other community-based organizations, policy makers, and researchers. NYSHealth also submitted written testimony to the New York State legislature and New York City Council, which are both grappling with food security issues.
Data analysis projects like this one do not need to be overly complex (simple descriptive statistics were reported), do not require expensive technology to store them, or do not demand a large number of staff to conduct them (NYSHealth’s research team currently comprises two full-time employees). Obtaining data can also be an opportunity to build or strengthen relationships with grantees or state agencies.
In a recently released report on preparing for the 2020–21 flu season during a pandemic, the foundation requested data from its grantee, the Public Good Projects, on current trends concerning negative attitudes toward vaccines in New York State. Furthermore, obtaining new data is not always necessary to uncover important insights. In the same flu report, data from past flu seasons and a literature review of flu preparedness strategies were used to draw recommendations for the then-upcoming (2020–21) flu season.
Another ongoing NYSHealth project is examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pediatric vaccination rates. The foundation obtained pediatric vaccination data via a request to the New York State Department of Health’s Immunization Information System. The results by region within New York State and by race and ethnicity have been helping to identify where children may be more vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases, particularly as schools were beginning to open back up in certain parts of the state. By collaboratively working with state and other agencies when requesting data, researchers can have the proper context of the data, including its limitations, and avoid duplication of work so they can instead complement the efforts of others. These relationships can also help ensure that key stakeholders have direct access to analyses and recommendations in reports when released.
NYSHealth is also uniquely equipped to analyze secondary effects of the COVID-19 pandemic because of its diverse funding priority areas: food and health, consumer empowerment, and veterans’ health. Research staff can apply specific lenses to available datasets (for example, the lenses of food scarcity or mental health impacts), drawing conclusions that may be diluted without examining such specific cuts of data.
These priority areas also prompt staff to gather data from nontraditional sources. For example, a New York City Council hearing on prenatal care in New York City hospitals provided valuable data, via a committee report and submitted testimonies, for an NYSHealth research project on severe maternal morbidity, as well as for future grant making.
Conclusion
Dedicating efforts to research and analytics can help foundations more effectively direct their grant making and provide targeted support to their grantees. Such research offers an independent point of view and informs grant making that can cut through political partisanship and inaction. Additionally, it fills a vital gap, as other organizations—even state and local health departments—do not always have the resources to conduct these analyses. Even basic analyses of publicly available data can enable grantees and policy makers to turn research into action, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, so as to provide effective relief to those most in need.
