5 Data Lessons from the Pandemic

October 22nd, 2021

By Denice Ross and Allison Plyer, co-creators, Pandemic to Prosperity and Pandemic to Prosperity: South

Eighteen months since the Covid pandemic upended the world, and sixteen years since we learned this lesson from Hurricane Katrina, good data is the path toward an equitable recovery. 

Here are 5 lessons learned from the pandemic and our careers in data and disasters:

1/ Design data to be granular enough to show which demographics and geographies are disproportionately impacted. The pandemic exposed and aggravated the preexisting disparities in America.  Of course, people in lower-income neighborhoods and communities of color know they have less access to basic services like the internet. But after the pandemic moved many Americans' lives online, it removed any doubt that broadband access is a needed utility like water or power. As the recovery progresses, disparities such as these will once again fall into the background, unless we as data practitioners commit to nurturing a steady stream of data disaggregated by race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, income, and geographic area. 

2/ Invest in data capacity now—to help with the current crisis and also with future shocks. With the pandemic, we saw many communities re-using data infrastructure and organizing capacity from previous stressors. For instance, Virginia was able to repurpose a data sharing and analytics framework they built for the opioid crisis to manage data around Covid testing. And, the State of Ohio’s DataOhio portal was ready to shine a light on rapidly changing conditions, including everything from  Covid cases in long-term care facilities to skyrocketing unemployment claims. 

Critical issues identified during the Covid crisis still lack data 18 months in. For example, consistent nationwide and granular data is needed on: 

  • Students not attending school, or not enrolled at all

  • Childcare and afterschool care access

  • Medical and mental healthcare needs 

  • Healthcare professional shortage/burnout

  • Housing instability/homelessness

  • Differential impacts on LGBTQ, immigrant, other vulnerable populations

  • Future of work and skills needs/job training

  • Rates of public exposure to health misinformation

  • Real-time tracking of federal spending and outcomes

The Biden Administration’s $1.9 Trillion American Rescue Plan gives an opportunity to invest in this type of foundational infrastructure. In state, local, and tribal governments, roles like Chief Data Officer can serve as stewards for these critical data. If we invest just half a percent in data infrastructure, we’ll be able to build out the data sets we need to ensure disparities stay front and center.

3/ Address data quality, standards, and timeliness to shed a more complete light on rapidly changing conditions and the needs of the most vulnerable.

As we reviewed dozens of indicators to track the response and recovery in the Pandemic to Prosperity series, many lacked timeliness, consistency, or granularity. Some data like Covid case rates are rapidly changing and updated daily—or should be. The American Community Survey (ACS) provides critical data such as disparities in health insurance coverage by race and households without access to a vehicle. However, it is only published once a year, and the pandemic rendered the 2020 data unusable. and Hurricane Ida this summer stopped the flow of Covid data in Louisiana. 

Lack of data standards across geographic areas made comparing numbers difficult. Some states combined types of Covid tests (antibody and antigen) that made their numbers unreliable. When the Department of Education stepped up their school surveys to monthly, the lack of national standards on reporting attendance made it impossible to distinguish between states that had strong policies in place to serve the most vulnerable students, and those that were not tracking attendance well.

The pandemic also spurred data innovation, like the Census Pulse Survey that provides timely, relevant, and flexible data. At first weekly, and now every two weeks, the Census Pulse asks critical questions of a rotating, representative sample of households and small businesses nationwide, with a School Pulse Panel Survey soon to follow, in partnership with the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. Pulse is an incredible example of agile surveying; as the pandemic changes, the Census Bureau has rotated through questions from vaccine hesitancy to the impact of the child tax credit on families to whether small businesses have vaccine requirements for employees. These all represent a shift toward quickly publishing much-needed data, trading off some accuracy for timeliness.

Similarly, the Columbia University Center on Poverty and Social Policy processed existing federal data to produce a monthly poverty rate -- the only timely source to show policymakers that the expanded Child Tax Credit and stimulus checks were successfully reducing poverty.

4/ Crises exist in context. Incorporate a broad range of data into decision-making to ensure critical aspects of our society and democracy don’t get derailed. 

Democracy sputtered through the pandemic but prevailed, as evidenced by record voting and the Census Bureau adhering to science above politics. In 2020, we tracked critical indicators on Census door-knocking progress and state readiness for safe voting during a pandemic. However, we saw explicit intersections between the health disparities worsened by Covid, and the opportunity for most-impacted communities to participate in our democracy. For instance, tribal nations had to restrict access to census-takers due to high Covid rates, and sued for more time to submit mail-in ballots with post offices located only one every 707 square miles. 

Government and philanthropic investments in “Get Out The Count” efforts strengthened civic infrastructure that is now being utilized to counter misinformation, promote vaccines and Child Tax Credit signups, and encourage engagement in redistricting and local spending of American Rescue Plan dollars. With all of this, it’s insufficient to merely track Covid case rates; it’s also critical to track how the crisis is impacting the wheels of our democracy

5/ Build partnerships and support community organizing to turn data into action. 

The power of data begins and ends with community. The key to informing an equitable recovery is to start by listening to the lived experiences of the most vulnerable. When people don’t have cars, what good are drive-up food and water distribution sites? Quantify how many households don’t have access to vehicles (e.g., 1 in 5 in New Orleans) and get these kinds of straightforward facts into the hands of community advocates. They’ll use it to push for change. Data about one’s own locality will hold more weight than national trends when persuading decisionmakers. And don’t overlook the power of local media. Where they exist, they’ll amplify the data and bolster awareness of critical needs.

We don’t know the exact contours of the next crisis.  But the trendline of pandemic, wildfires, and extreme weather make clear there is already a baseline need for data on power and utility stability, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate resilience. And with policy and interventions often focused only on that which we can measure, investing in data capacity will better prepare Americans to handle whatever comes next. 

To read the latest Pandemic to Prosperity report and the archives dating back to July 2020, go to PandemicToProsperity.org.