Variation in State COVID-19 Disease Reporting Forms on Social Identity, Social Needs, and Vaccination Status

To assess variation in the way state health departments collect data on social identity, social needs, and vaccination status for people testing positive for COVID-19, we reviewed all state health department Web sites for COVID-19 disease reporting forms. We located forms for 39 states and coded each one for the presence and format of fields on race, ethnicity, disability, language, sexual and gender identity, comorbidities, pregnancy status, and social needs such as housing stability, occupation, and prior COVID-19 vaccination status. We find considerable variation in both type and format of data collected. For example, 10% of state forms have fields for race and ethnicity that are more disaggregated than the 5 US Census categories, 18% have fields on mental or physical ability, 37% have nonbinary or other fields for gender identity, 28% have fields on housing stability, and 15% have fields on vaccination status. Our findings suggest that national efforts to address COVID-19 may be limited by lack of standardization of data collection methods.