Hill publishes research from INSPIRE Study
Recent research led by Mandy Hill, DrPH, MPH, professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine, studying how individuals perceive their own health after experiencing COVID-19 symptoms has been published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.
The research, titled “Race, Ethnicity, and Gender Differences in Patient Reported Well-Being and Cognitive Functioning Within 3 Months of Symptomatic Illness During COVID-19 Pandemic” served as a secondary analysis of the data collected in the INSPIRE study.
Designed to expand the knowledge base related to COVID-19, the INSPIRE Study is an eight-center national project funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in collaboration with Hugo Health. Led by Hill and co-investigator Jonathan Dyal, MD, MPH, the multi-institutional, longitudinal cohort study focused on the association of age and other vulnerabilities within clinical outcomes and patient-reported outcomes in people infected with the illness.
The study enrolled nearly 4,000 participants or adults ages 18 or older who have experienced COVID-19 and have been tested within four weeks. Enrollees could be from one of two categories: either those who had been seeking testing but had a negative result or those testing positive across outpatient and inpatient care.
Using a Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) score, patients in the study assessed their own symptoms. The researchers then used the PROMIS scores to measure participants’ self-perceptions and assessed whether differences existed between subjects in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender.
“The results of our research revealed that three months after an initial COVID-19 infection, Black participants reported better cognitive function and more fatigue than White participants, while females and other gender minoritized groups experienced lower well-being than males,” Hill said. “These findings are important because they affirm the social constructs, specifically race, ethnicity, and gender, are influencing differences in how people experience COVID-19 related health outcomes.
“The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the health inequities people around the world were already experiencing, creating an opportunity to explore further the intricacies of our lived experiences and why we experience things in the way that we do,” Hill said. “This study is a segment of a broader exploration of how social factors influence the biological sciences.”
Additional institutions participating in the INSPIRE Study include UCLA Health, Yale, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Thomas Jefferson University, University of California, San Francisco Health, University of Washington Medicine, and Rush University Medical Center, which served as the lead research site.