PPE Needs in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic

A Retrospective Analysis of the GetUsPPE Platform

Overview

This repository contains the largest publicly available longitudinal dataset of PPE supply and demand collected in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between March 2020 and March 2021, GetUsPPE received over 21,000 requests from healthcare organizations and individuals across all 50 states, tracking critical shortages and facilitating data-driven distribution of PPE donations.

Published in: Public Health Challenges (Wiley), March 2023 Study Period: March 2020 - March 2021 Data Collection Date: April 24, 2021

Key Findings

This retrospective analysis examines PPE requests by:

• Geographic distribution: County-level demand across the United States
• Temporal patterns: Monthly trends in PPE shortages
• Facility types: Acute vs. non-acute care settings
• PPE types: N95 respirators, surgical masks, gowns, gloves, and other equipment

Data & Methodology

Access the Data:

• SQL Queries: src/sql/
• CSV Datasets: data/

All data represents anonymized, cross-sectional information queried from the GetUsPPE Gateway database on April 24, 2021. This dataset enables researchers to analyze PPE distribution patterns, facility characteristics, and supply chain dynamics during the pandemic.

Publications

Primary Research

1. Rubashkin MG, et al. (2023). "PPE needs in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic: An analysis using the GetUsPPE online platform." Public Health Challenges, 2(1), e65. DOI: 10.1002/puh2.65

2. Gondi S, Beckman AL, Deveau N, et al. (2020). "Personal protective equipment needs in the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic." The Lancet, 395(10242), e90-e91. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31038-2 | PMC7255297

3. Lee CM, Juarez AM, Ormachea J, et al. (2020). "The Story of #GetMePPE and GetUsPPE.org to Mobilize Health Care Response to COVID-19: Rapidly Deploying Digital Tools for Better Health Care." Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(7), e20469. PMID: 32530813 | PMC7373376

Related Research Citing GetUsPPE Data

4. Ranney ML, Griffeth V, Jha AK. (2020). "Critical supply shortages—the need for ventilators and personal protective equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic." New England Journal of Medicine, 382(18), e41. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2006141 - Cited 1,411 times

5. Gondi S, Beckman AL, Deveau N, et al. (2021). "Effective supply chain surveillance for PPE." The Lancet, 397(10286), 1706-1707. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00783-2 | PMC8102039

6. Govindan K, Mina H, Alavi B. (2020). "Contributing factors to personal protective equipment shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic." Preventive Medicine, 141, 106263. PMC7531934

7. Chowdhury P, Paul SK, Kaisar S, Moktadir MA. (2021). "COVID-19 pandemic related supply chain studies: A systematic review." Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 148, 102271. PMC7881707

8. Verma A, Nandi A, Dhawan V, Chand M. (2021). "What have we learnt about the sourcing of personal protective equipment during pandemics? Leadership and management in healthcare supply chain management: A scoping review." Frontiers in Public Health, 9, 765501. Link

Impact

The GetUsPPE platform:

• Logged thousands of PPE requests from healthcare facilities nationwide
• Delivered millions of units of PPE to nursing homes, hospitals, rural healthcare facilities, small clinics, homeless shelters, and Indigenous communities
• Provided real-time data to guide policy decisions and triage distribution efforts
• Created the largest public dataset for pandemic PPE supply chain research

Acknowledgements

This work is the culmination of over 200 individuals who contributed to data collection and developed the GetUsPPE database.

Here is a shortlist of these individuals from across GetUsPPE and Findthemasks who made this study possible!

• Matthew Rubashkin
• Kelsey Coolahan
• Taylor Purzycki
• Charlotte Lee
• Daniel Lurie
• Benjamin Batorsky
• Alexander Chen
• Joanna Calderón
• Shuhan He
• Stephanie Zeller
• Sunny Mui
• Ryan Cranfill
• Jonathan Rubashkin
• Lisa Watts
• Cody Reinold
• Cle Diggins
• Lisa Nash
• Lukas Bergstrom
• Alecio Madrid
• Rachel Popkin
• Catherine Chang
• Albert Wong
• Linda Yang
• Adam L Beckman
• Keyon Vafa
• Suhas Gondi
• Galen Hu
• Melissa Song
• Megan Ranney
• Shikha Gupta

How to Cite

If you use this dataset in your research, please cite:

@article{rubashkin2023ppe,
  title={PPE needs in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic: An analysis using the GetUsPPE online platform},
  author={Rubashkin, Matthew G and Coolahan, Kelsey and others},
  journal={Public Health Challenges},
  volume={2},
  number={1},
  pages={e65},
  year={2023},
  publisher={Wiley},
  doi={10.1002/puh2.65}
}

License

See LICENSE file for details.

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For more information: Visit GetUsPPE.org or contact the research team through the published papers above.