Ethnic Disparities in Physical, Mental, and Cognitive Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Snapshot of Metro-Detroit

The COVID-19 pandemic illuminated ethnic and racial disparities in health outcomes within the state of Michigan. These health disparities are evidenced by geographic variability; as roughly half of the COVID cases and more than a third of COVID related deaths in the state occurred in the ethnically diverse Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties (New York Times, 2023). However, cognitive health in the context of the pandemic is not well-known, particularly across diverse groups. The current study investigates ethnic differences in health during the COVID-19 pandemic by examining whether there are racial and ethnic differences in physical and mental health status, whether there are ethnic differences in performance in the cognitive domains of episodic memory, working memory, and verbal fluency, and whether ethnicity moderates the association between physical or mental health status and cognitive performance. To examine these associations, we analyzed a sample of 600 Black, White, and Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) older adults from the Detroit Area Wellness Network COVID Supplement, a regionally representative sample of older adults aged 65 and older. Path analyses revealed that Black participants showed a higher burden of chronic illness than other groups, and White participants scored highest in all three domains of cognition. Next, moderation analyses revealed that ethnicity moderated the relationship between mental health status and episodic memory, with a stronger effect in White and MENA participants. These results highlight that the cognitive health of racial and ethnic minority populations of older adults is complex, especially in the context of the pandemic.