A “COVID Compass” for Navigating the Pandemic

Introduction

The COVID Compass provides a balanced outcomes measurement approach. The aim is to bring together publicly available data on trends in health, social hardship, and the economy and to make results available to health, business, political, community and education leaders who must make decisions on how to reduce damage from COVID-19 going forward and how to look back to see how successful they have been at mitigating health, social and economic damage associated with the pandemic.

This project is one of several collaborative initiatives that are led by the Dartmouth Institute Coproduction Laboratory and by the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University (ECU).  This work began with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks to conduct research on geographic variations in a balanced set of outcomes including health, economic, and social hardship using publicly available data.

The COVID Compass offers a framework and database for navigating the pandemic. It could help decision makers to effectively monitor and mitigate harms caused by COVID-19 and could be adapted for future epidemics.  The Compass will track COVID mortality rates and excess deaths alongside key trends in other important areas such as economic vitality and social hardship.  This is designed to help inform policies, actions, and behaviors that together influence lives lost and livelihoods damaged.

COVID-19 has wrought havoc worldwide.  Many have died.  Many more have lost their jobs, suffered financially, or endured other hardships.  Disparities due to race, ethnicity, income, immigrant status and other social risks have been exacerbated.  Epidemiologists predict that COVID-19 will not disappear nor be eradicated by vaccines, and will become endemic.

Science, vested Interests and Hunches, not Comprehensive Data   

The greatest challenge confronting political, public health, business, education, and social welfare leaders is to restore the economy, businesses, and schools without further risking public health.  Most are trying to minimize mortality, economic and social problems- based on a mix of public health advice and clinical science, vested interests, and hunches.3 Useful, up-to-date information on COVID-19 case rates and case fatality rates are widely available via “trackers” offered by many prestigious organizations.

However, these focus primarily on creating “leader boards” showing COVID-19 case rates and fatality rates and do not include key trends in other vital outcomes related to economic vitality or social hardship nor do they track the “upstream” policies, actions, and behaviors that combine to produce key “downstream” results on lives lost and on livelihoods damaged.

A “COVID Compass” for Intelligently Navigating the Pandemic

The COVID Compass project aims to provide helpful information to guide decisions by tracking, national, state, and local policies over time and their impact on a balanced set of outcomes – health metrics (e.g., COVID-19 incidence and mortality), economic trends (e.g., unemployment rate) and social hardship indicators (e.g., food insecurity).

The COVID Compass includes data on COVID-19 related health outcomes as well as economic and social hardship outcomes. The data are taken from the best available public sources. The aim is to provide information to guide decisions by tracking state and local policies over time and their effect on a balanced set of health, economic and social outcomes, such as COVID-19 incidence and mortality, economic trends (e.g., unemployment rates, new job postings), and social hardship indicators (e.g., housing and food insecurity). We plan to expand the scope of these efforts to include regional, national, and international studies with time.

In brief, just as a Balanced Scorecard can be used to track and guide business decisions, the COVID Compass can track and guide health decisions that aim to decrease adverse health outcomes and at the same time minimize adverse economic and social outcomes.