Look to Precision Public Health to Address the Perfect Storm Fueling COVID-19 Mortality
“To address the interaction between COVID-19 mortality and the NCD pandemic will require adhering to the tenets of “precision public health”.”
The interaction of COVID-19 with co-existing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is a perfect storm, particularly for communities of poverty, according to a new opinion piece by Columbia Mailman School of Public Health researchers in the journal British Medical Journal. While primarily targeting the elderly, NCDs and underlying metabolic conditions– obesity, hypertension, kidney disease, and diabetes in younger people, are all associated with higher risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death from COVID-19.
“The global response has been to treat COVID-19 as a vertical disease rather than addressing the full ecosystem of the COVID-19 response or its interaction with the NCD pandemic or poverty,” said Nina Schwalbe, an adjunct professor in the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia Mailman School.
To address the interaction between COVID-19 mortality and the NCD pandemic will require adhering to the tenets of “precision public health,” and the authors recommend the following:
• Use data and better data sharing to focus interventions on risk reduction for those most susceptible.
• Move from a vertical approach to build synergies across care platforms, in particular between NCDs and infectious diseases.
• Provide the socioeconomically vulnerable with the means to mitigate the pandemic response effects on poverty. An example of such a strategy is underway in Pakistan, where the government has provided over 80 million people with emergency cash transfers.