Administrative Core

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected minority and underserved communities thus highlighting the need for innovative approaches to address the impact this disease has had on our most vulnerable populations. According to the CDC, Blacks are 3X more likely to die from Covid-19 infection and 4X more likely to be hospitalized, than their white counterparts. In Alabama, Black people have died at 1.5 times the rate of white people, with higher rates found in rural areas, which often lack healthcare infrastructure. Unfortunately, the disparity that exist with regard to the morbidity and mortality associated with Covid-19 infection, has carried over to decreased Covid-19 vaccination rates in minority populations, which is more pronounced in southern states, where there is long-standing issues of lack of access to care for minority populations, due to underfunding of safety-net healthcare institutions and frank systemic racism. Thus, to decrease the disparity in morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 infection experienced by these individuals, we need to work together to address the inequities that increase the risk of death from COVID-19 for minority and underserved populations and that contribute to their decreased vaccination rates. While issues of mistrust of government-run healthcare programs exist in minority and rural communities and has contributed to some degree to decreased uptake of Covid-19 vaccination in minority populations, a larger issue is related to misinformation which has contributed to 34% of Blacks opting for the “wait and see” approach, especially in younger individuals spread the disease in their communities. Therefore, there must be a concerted, multi-prong bottom-up approach involving various stakeholders that have a history of community engagement in these populations and has already garnered trustworthiness. Here we propose such a program, the WeCARE project, which consist of an intertwined network of various stakeholders such as community leaders, healthcare providers, and civic organizations, that will work together on various fronts to address the barriers contributing to this Covid-19 vaccination hesitancy. Led by Tuskegee University, this project is focused on providing ethically-sound, culturally-appropriate, evidence-based information on the Covid-19 vaccines to at-risk minority and underserved rural populations. The goal is to obtain data related to the unique and often unnamed barriers to Covid-19 vaccination, that many will only share with entities that have earned their trust prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, and use this partnership to overcome those barriers, thus resulting in increased uptake of vaccination in these at-risk communities.