Tracking Race Over Time in Hawaii
In this graph of Covid cases in Hawaii over time, two things are immediately visible: Hawaii experienced a major spike in cases in late July/August, and that for the majority of those cases, the race of patients is unknown. In this story, I will investigate the missing data. A story by the nonprofit news site Honolulu Civil Beat speculated that this lack of data is caused by overwhelmed investigators during this surge. I will investigate how this could have happened, and why they haven’t been able to catch up despite a plateau in the number of “unknown” and total cases around the end of September.
Hawaii ranks as the most racially diverse state in the US, and its racial makeup is much different than the mainland. It is the only state where white people make up less than a plurality of the population, and almost a quarter (24%) of Hawaiians are multiracial. In the Covid data where race was collected, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders make up a disproportionately large number of Hawaii’s covid cases. In this story I will investigate if the “unknown” cases also account for a spike in the proportion of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander cases, or if perhaps another racial group has been underreported.
I have contacted and am waiting to hear back about interviews with several sources. My plan is to investigate the chain of custody for this data from the hospital to when it is reported on the state’s website, and therefore included in the CTP data. I am working on speaking with one of the major hospitals, such as The Queen’s Medical Center or the Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women and Children, to learn me more about how they keep track of data and report it to the state. I have also contacted Janice Obuko, the public information officer for the Hawaii Department of Health, who I hope will be able to tell me more about how covid race data is reported to the state agency. I have also contacted the Hawaii Data Collaborative, a group which compiles state-level data on several topics, for more context about how data is collected in Hawaii and hopefully local knowledge about who to talk to to find this missing data. I am also hoping to find an epidemiologist and/or data scientist with the Hawaii Department of Health.