Black History Month is a time for the US to recognize and celebrate the contributions of African Americans. Nevertheless, we must be cognizant that we cannot confine the impact of African American contributions to just one month each year. There must be continued effort to break down systemic barriers within the computing community to further the call of this year’s theme, Black Health and Wellness.
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In the final week of February, we share an article on pandemics’ impact on populations and effective mitigation strategies. There have been many forecasting models tested since 2019. However, one glaring truth was that there seemed to be a paucity of forecasting studies focused on African American community, an identified COVID-vulnerable community.
Timothy Oladunni, Max Denis, Esther Ososanya, and Abdoulaye Barry set out to investigate the trajectory of COVID-related deaths in African American communities. Their research provides a forecast to decision-makers, giving them necessary tools to improve mitigation strategies for these communities along with helping the community to combat the further spread of the virus.
Access a copy of “Exponential Smoothing Forecast of African American’s COVID-19 Fatalities” by Oladunni, Denis, Ososanya, and Barry of the University of the District of Columbia computer science, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering departments.
Abstract
This work focuses on the spread and impact of COVID-19 in the black community. A detailed analysis will improve the universality of a comprehensive mitigation strategy in reducing and combatting the spread of coronavirus. Our analysis of COVID-19 spans March 2020 to November 2020. Forecasting computation was based on exponential smoothing. The quality of our models was evaluated using the Mean Absolute Percentage Error. Predominantly black states in the US were considered for the experiment. All things being equal, a forecast to February 2021 suggests a disturbing forecast for the African American communities in the states investigated.
