The Press Cohort (Minnesota)

In early April 2020, when the CDC was not providing any COVID-19 mortality data by race and ethnicity, Senior Researcher Andi Egbert and the small team of the Research Lab at American Public Media developed the “Color of Coronavirus” to monitor and trumpet racially inequitable deaths by state and across the nation.

They began scouring state websites, building a database, and producing regular web updates that continued over the course of the next year—to underscore the widely disproportionate toll that the virus was having on communities of color, stealing beloved family and community members at two to three times the rate of white residents.

Andi led the Lab’s efforts in imaging the project; data collection, standardization, visualization, and analysis; narrative-writing, age-adjusting the mortality rates; giving media interviews and connecting with many partners.

Rich with interactive features that make plain the cruel landscape that resulted from the virus’ intersection with systemic racism, Color of Coronavirus has been widely cited by local, national, and international media outlets; referenced in congressional testimony and academic journals; and incorporated into health practitioner training and college curricula. The project’s valuable data file has also been utilized by hundreds of researchers, practitioners and policymakers seeking to document and alter the inequitable toll of the virus.

• See the latest Color of Coronavirus update at: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race
• Learn more about APM Research Lab’s work: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/
• Follow APM Research Lab on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APMResearch
• Follow Andi Egbert on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DataANDInfo

A few words from those who nominated Andi:

“Andi led the APM Research Lab’s Color of Coronavirus, which was the first project to consistently track COVID-19 mortality rates by race and ethnicity, showing huge disparities in the impact of the pandemic. This work has been cited in the halls of Congress, academic journals, many leading national and international news outlets, and has been used by advocates seeking to change and improve our collective response to COVID-19.”