Dr. Zhenlong Li, collaborated with Dr. Shan Qiao from public health, has been awarded a project titled “A novel data-driven approach to empirically link structural racism and health access and utilization in South Carolina” by the UofSC OVPR Racial Justice and Equity Research Program. Other team members include Drs. Xiaoming Li, Bankole Olatosi, and Jiajia Zhang.
Leveraging large place visitation records with high granularity sampled from mobile devices and census data, we propose an integrative big data approach to examine the association between structural racism and disparities in health care access in South Carolina. The proposed research will develop innovative measurement tools to assess the racial/ethnical disparities in health care access and utilization in SC and explore spaciotemporal pattern of such disparities from 2018 to 2021. The findings will provide population level real-world data to address structural racism in SC and improve overall quality of care and population health, especially for African American communities.
