RESEARCHERS’ CORNER
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T he main goal of the NJ HEROES TOO initiative was to identify community-based outreach strategies that could improve access to COVID-19 testing in underserved communities. As part of this initiative, we tested different outreach strategies in four NJ counties with large Black and Latinx communities that were among the hardest hit during the early stages of the pandemic. Our team strongly believes that in order to develop an effective intervention, the people who it is meant to serve must be part of the design process. As researchers, we need to learn from community members and ensure their perspectives are addressed in a meaningful way. This first paper from the NJ HEROES TOO initiative represents an initial part of this process. With the help of our community partners, we recruited Black and Latinx community members and healthcare members to better understand their experiences during the pandemic and their perspectives on COVID-19 mitigation behaviors (for example mask wearing),
testing, and vaccines. We used group interviews, a qualitative research method, which are uniquely suited to elevate the voice of communities that too often go unheard. We found that fear, illness, and loss experienced during the pandemic
motivated intense information seeking, preventive behaviors, and testing. However, vaccine skepticism was high, with distrust expressed by
Black participants. The perspectives shared by participants played a critical role informing the outreach strategies we went on to test in the next phase of the work.
To view the article go to : jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2781957 .
Citation: Jimenez ME, Rivera-Núñez Z, Crabtree BF, Hill D, Pellerano MB, Devance D, Macenat M, Lima D, Martinez Alcaraz E, Ferrante JM, Barrett ES, Blaser MJ, Panettieri RA Jr, Hudson SV. Black and Latinx Community Perspectives on COVID-19 Mitigation Behaviors, Testing, and Vaccines. JAMA Netw Open. 2021 Jul 1;4(7):e2117074. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.17074. PubMed PMID: 34264327.
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