Three weeks ago, I posted on mortality rates in the area increasing due to the Covid pandemic. This time I will look at pandemic racial disparities in Cambria County. The table below shows life expectancies for Cambria County for the years 2016-2018 to the years 2019-2021. These are 3 year moving averages in the table. I will focus on Whites and African Americans as other racial groups have small populations in the county.
| Group | 2016-2018 | 2017-2019 | 2018-2020 | 2019-2021 |
| Overall | 75.8 | 76.1 | 75.8 | 74.9 |
| White | 76.2 | 76.4 | 76.1 | 75.3 |
| African American | 65.6 | 67.3 | 66.9 | 63.7 |
We see that overall life expectancy in the county decreased from a peak of 76.1 years in 2017-2019 to 74.9 years in 2019-2021. The years 2020 and 2021 were the peak years of the COVID pandemic. Over the same period, white life expectancy in the county decreased by 1.2 years from 76.1 to 74.9 years. At the same time African American life expectancy decreased by 3.6 years from 67.3 to 63.7 years.
County Health Rankings provides the breakdown of various statistics by race for each county in the U.S. I will go through each of them to demonstrate the impact of the pandemic. I will start with age adjusted mortality which is measured in years of potential life lost (YPLL). YPLL is defined as the number of years lost before age 75 per 100,000. For example, if someone dies at age 25 then they have 50 years of potential life lost.
| Group | 2016-2018 | 2017-2019 | 2018-2020 | 2019-2021 |
| Overall | 460 | 440 | 450 | 480 |
| White | 440 | 430 | 440 | 470 |
| African American | 880 | 840 | 950 | 1,090 |
The above table shows the premature age adjusted mortality rates overall and by race in Cambria County. From 2017-2019 to 2019-2021, the overall mortality rate increased by 9.1% (440 to 480). White mortality increased by 9.3% while African American mortality increased by 27.8% over the same period. The increase for African Americans was almost 3 times that of whites.
| Group | 2015-2018 | 2016-2019 | 2017-2020 | 2018-2021 |
| Overall | 50 | 50 | 50 | 50 |
| White | 40 | 40 | 40 | 40 |
| African American | 240 | 210 | 160 | 170 |
The above table shows child mortality rates (defined as the number of deaths before age 18). It shows that there was absolutely no change in the rates overall or for whites. For African Americans, there was an improvement in the rate up to 2020 with a 6% increase when 2021 was added. This shows that adults and the elderly were the ones most impacted by the pandemic.
| Group | 2016-2018 | 2017-2019 | 2018-2020 | 2019-2021 |
| Overall | 61 | 52 | 50 | 58 |
| White | 59 | 50 | 47 | 53 |
| African American | 119 | 112 | 117 | 217 |
Opioid and other drug overdose deaths are often cited as the reason for the high mortality rate in the African American community here. There was an 85% increase in overdose death rate in the county in 2019-2021. It is hard to say how much of this increase is due to the pandemic.
There are other potential reasons for the increase in pandemic racial disparities in Cambria County. I will review other disparities presented by county health rankings to further explain these disparities.