This radio program from The Commonwealth Club draws on two separate events: "One Year Later: COVID Tracking Project and the Power of Data with Alexis Madrigal" and "Vaccination Equity: The Need to Protect All Communities." 

In February 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic changed life as we know it in the United States, journalists Alexis Madrigal and Erin Kissane of The Atlantic started the COVID Tracking Project. The project was an effort to provide comprehensive data and to pressure public health agencies to publish better metrics regarding the spread of COVID-19. While the founders only anticipated that the project would last a few weeks until the government began to keep more accurate numbers, the project will officially cease collecting data on March 7, exactly one year after it started.

Also in this program, Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, highlights the equity issues that have shaped our understanding of the pandemic and its disparate impacts. Since early 2020, African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans have been disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus, shining a light on a range of socio-eonomic issues and disparities in housing, employment and access to public health services. Now, as the Bay Area begins to slowly re-open with the increasing availability of vaccines, the region is facing challenges in ensuring that vaccination rollout efforts are equitable.