Prevention Research Center: Parenting Among Women Who Are Opioid Users

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PROJECT SUMMARY The global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic that causes the severe respiratory illness COVID-19 is the worst health crisis the United States has faced in a century. Although this highly contagious virus has infected millions of Americans already, the disease burdens are disproportionately born by historically underserved populations such as Latinx communities. Nationally, Latinx people with COVID-19 are hospitalized at four times the rate of Whites and have much higher rates of morbidity and mortality. This disparity is notable in Oregon, where the 13% of our population that is Latinx represents approximately 44% of COVID-19 cases. An urgent need exists to reach Oregon’s Latinx community with public health and prevention messages to increase testing. This project will implement a culturally-tailored community outreach and testing program to increase the reach, access, and uptake of testing in Latinx communities in Oregon. The project will bring together a world-class team of prevention scientists, public health experts, Latinx researchers, community partners, and biologists who have been working together to conduct SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic testing since March, soon after the pandemic first arrived in the U.S. This team has established a CLIA-certified laboratory and honed molecular testing protocols, hired and trained laboratory personnel and a field research team, procured diagnostic testing equipment and supplies, and partnered with county public health offices and hospitals throughout the state to conduct testing. The team also conducted a comprehensive community assessment using community-based participatory methods to gather Latinx community feedback on modes of communication, health messages, and testing protocols, and staffed multiple county-led testing sites serving Latinx communities. Using these resources and expertise as a foundation, a Sequential Multiple Armed Randomized Trial (SMART) will enable the evaluation of strategies for increasing testing rates and promoting health behaviors in Latinx communities. Specifically, culturally informed, community-oriented interventions will determine tools and best practices to increase testing rates and health behaviors. The efficacy of different types of approaches for increasing access to and utilization of testing will be evaluated. Lastly, the work will examine a set of county-level variables thought to affect communities’ abilities to sustain testing capacity. With support from a Latinx Community and Scientific Advisory Board, the project will ramp up to ultimately support 36 community testing sites across six counties in Oregon to serve Latinx communities. Over time, this project will help communities institutionalize optimal local testing frameworks supported by UO laboratory facilities for testing capacity, technical support for testing logistics, and collection of data on health behaviors, testing rates, and sustainability. The resulting structures and systems will be poised for future scale-up to other vulnerable communities and/or for other public health purposes (e.g., vaccination campaigns). If successful, this project will lead to a major reduction in COVID-19 health disparities in underserved populations.