California’​​s Com​mitment to Health​​ Equity  

CDPH continues its focus on health equity and strives to provide the highest possible standard of health for all Californians by giving special attention to those at greatest risk of poor health and severe outcomes.    
Collecting and reporting health equity data helps to identify those at greatest risk and improve the state’s response. CDPH tracks several disease metrics (such as hospitalization, deaths, test positivity) and vaccination status by race, ethnicity and age as well as the Healthy Places Index (HPI). This allows for identification of disproportionality impacted populations and communities and describe changes in trends over time.   
CDPH also strives to increase data completeness, which critical to addressing inequities. CDPH reports data completeness by race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity to better understand missingness in the data.  ​​​

​ Data ​Sets​

Throughout the pandemic, severe COVID-19 disproportionately impacted people over 65, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, Black, American Indian/Alaskan Native, and Hispanic populations. Severe COVID-19 also disproportionately affected groups already living in communities with higher rates of chronic illness and poor access to health information and health care. Many of these same communities have also achieved lower than average vaccination rates for the latest COVID-19 vaccines.  
In 2023, COVID-19 death rates declined for all populations; however, hospitalizations and deaths were still most common among people over 65, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, Black, American Indian/Alaskan Native, and Hispanic populations. 

2023