Posts in Health
CTData Conference 2021 Recap: Census Data Tools

As the Census State Data Center, we have the opportunity to learn about all sorts of census data products that are not widely known. For CTData Conference 2021, we wanted to bring some tools that are relevant for life as it is now, during the pandemic. There have been major floods in Connecticut in some unexpected places. And of course the pandemic has brought suffering that has been unequalled for generations. The products we share with you, the Community Resilience Estimates and the Pulse Surveys, give us ways to understand both the risks in our communities and the impact in the state to these challenges. Click to learn more.

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The Effect of Covid on Organizations in the Hartford Region

How has the coronavirus pandemic affected different groups in Connecticut, and especially the Hartford region? What are people doing to prevent its spread, and what do people know about the virus? As part of the Putting Local Data to Work project through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Urban Institute, CTData began working with three of these organizations (Sudanese American House of CT, Family Life in Education, and Hartford Health Initiative) to identify ways to support them as they served their constituents in their response to and recovery from the pandemic.

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Essential Equity: Women, Covid-19, and Rebuilding CT

Covid-19 has revealed the inequities and injustices that perpetuate the systems in Connecticut. This blog post highlights the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on women and girls (particularly, women and girls of color). We urge policymakers, government officials, philanthropists, non-profit service providers, corporations, and community members to use this information to work towards equity through relief and recovery efforts.

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Connecticut Sees Shocking Increase in Deaths During Covid-19

As communities and businesses across Connecticut continue their ongoing battle with the Covid-19 pandemic, an initial look at excess deaths underscores the destruction this public health crisis has left in its wake. Excess deaths are deaths that occurred above and beyond what would be expected in an average year. In other words, the number of excess deaths is a measure of the temporary increase in the mortality rate of a population. To understand the relationship between Covid-19 and excess deaths, we compared the actual death toll in 2020 to the average of death tolls from the past 5 years, using data from the CT Department of Public Health (CT DPH). To learn more, continue reading or download a pdf version of our findings.

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HealthJason Cheung
CTData's Revamped Covid-19 Dashboard

Covid-19. Pandemic. Stimulus payment. Unemployment. Reopening.

These are some of the phrases echoed throughout conversations with friends, family, colleagues, doctors, scientists, and government officials since March. Our knowledge regarding Covid-19 has evolved over the past five months, yet uncertainty continues to linger.

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HealthJason Cheungcovid19
New Business Registrations Now Passing 2019 Numbers

As Connecticut businesses begin to open their doors, new business registrations in the state have been steadily rising for the past 12 weeks. When comparing data from 2019 to 2020, new business registrations are higher now than in the same week of 2019. Though most weeks have lagged behind 2019, with Week 12 (the week of March 22, 2020) being the lowest, 2020 registrations began passing 2019 in the past few weeks.

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Mental Health in a Pandemic: Data Suggests Greater Need for Services and Resources in Connecticut

“How are you?” This seemingly standard question has become increasingly hard to answer. Every day, we see or experience the horrific implications surrounding Covid-19 whether it’s death rates, rising confirmed cases, skyrocketing job loss, or simply not being able to hug a friend or family member. We can’t fully understand the health and wellbeing of our residents during this time without examining mental health. In this analysis, we look at how different populations in Connecticut are faring when it comes to mental health.

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How are Households in Connecticut Being Impacted by Covid-19?

On April 23, the U.S. Census Bureau began collecting data on the effects of COVID-19 on American households, called the Household Pulse Survey. The survey explores: loss in employment income; expected loss in employment income; food scarcity; delayed medical care; housing insecurity; and K-12 educational changes. Connecticut saw the biggest increase between the first two weeks in the delay of medical care. In addition, over 50% of households have experienced income loss since March 13, 2020.

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Revisiting COVIDeracy: What’s in a Number?

Like many of our partners, with every new data point, news article, and piece of information, more questions continue to arise. This week, we dove into the COVID-19 death data to highlight how a simple difference in data definitions can influence key takeaways. To do this, we compared day by day deaths to cumulative deaths.

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HealthGuest User
Reopen or Stay Home? Connecticut Surveys Show Mixed Results

With unemployment rates and claims for unemployment benefits rising, Connecticut businesses are grappling with how to be more agile, moving their work online, and altering business-as-usual to safely return employees to work. The State has developed advisory groups such as Reopen Connecticut Advisory Board and hired consulting firms to understand and plan for the next phase. These efforts assume that employees feel safe returning to work and that businesses have enough reserves to manage through the crisis. Survey results suggest that may not be the case in Connecticut.

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COVIDeracy: Data Literacy in Uncertain Times

At CTData, we are data people and believe data is for everyone. We know access to reliable and trustworthy resources is essential to increasing data literacy and informing decision making, especially during a global health crisis. We also know unless you were trained as an epidemiologist, it can be difficult to understand how to read and interpret the information being disseminated.

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How COVID-19 is Impacting Our Workforce: Total Unemployment Claims by Age, Gender and Sector

Losing a job is hard enough, but losing a job during a crisis can lead to even more devastation. As unemployment shakes the state, the data shows that its impact varies based on age, gender, and sector. We created the charts below to illustrate which groups have been most affected by unemployment in Connecticut. Read more for a visual summary of unemployment claims data by age, gender, and industry sector provided by the CT Department of Labor for the weeks of March 15th and 22nd.

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Some Fairfield Cities May Be Flattening the COVID-19 Curve

Given our close proximity to New York state, Connecticut has been hit hard by COVID-19. In fact, a recent New York Times article reported four of Connecticut’s metro areas in the top 15 nationally for the number of new deaths in the last two weeks: Fairfield County (#2), Hartford (#3), New Haven (#6), and Torrington (#11). Statewide, the number of confirmed cases continues to climb as testing becomes more accessible. As of Monday, April 27, Connecticut had 90,746 tests completed; 25,997 confirmed cases; 1,758 hospitalizations; and 2,012 deaths. On average, per 1000 residents, that is approximately 25.34 tests, 7.26 confirmed cases, 0.49 hospitalizations, and 0.56 deaths.

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Stopping the Spread: Using Trusted Data Sources to Prevent Misinformation about COVID-19

CTData realizes that it can be challenging to understand what sources to trust and where to find reliable data. We created a COVID-19 dashboard with daily updates, including the number of completed tests, confirmed cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Detailed information is available at the state and county level with the number of confirmed cases available at the town level. Data in the dashboard comes from the governor’s daily updates with data from the CT Department of Public Health (DPH).

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HealthGuest Usercovid19
Coronavirus Doesn’t Change Where College Students Get Counted in Census 2020

Everyone’s lives have been upended due to the novel coronavirus. You may be reading this from your home “office” (dining table, kitchen counter, your child’s fort…). You and others in your community also may have college students staying with you since classes have moved online. The coronavirus has also affected census operations, but one thing hasn’t changed—college students should be counted where they would have been residing on April 1.

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The SEOW Prevention Data Portal Has Gotten a Makeover!

We've been hard at work, but it's finally here! Thanks to the collaboration with our partners at the DMHAS Center for Prevention Evaluation and Statistics (CPES) at UConn Health, the SEOW Prevention Data Portal is better than ever! Read the statement from CPES below to hear more about these exciting additions. You can also see the changes for yourself here.

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HealthMorgan Finn