RAPID: Tuskegee University COVID Aware Program

Because of the ever-evolving nature of COVID-19 information and need for a nationwide response to prevention and containment methods recommended by public health experts, there is an urgent need for all communities including underrepresented minorities to trust and implement these prevention and containment methods. This project is focused on understanding how minority communities? access and attend to these disease prevention messages during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, with potential for understanding their responses to future pandemics and disasters as well. This project will design and test culturally-sensitive tools and materials that promote disease prevention. Based on the successful outcome of this research project, the disease prevention strategies developed can be institutionalized by federal, state, and local agencies. The data may bear on the trustworthiness of communications to minority communities in the deep south. The findings have the capacity to positively affect the diversity of materials, and reduce the levels of mistrust that do exist within minority communities across the deep south. Results from this project will be disseminated in journals and at conferences. Materials produced by the project will be made available to practitioners and other researchers. Students will be trained as part of this project.

This proposal is for research to mitigate the negative impacts of COVID-19 on public health, society, and the economy. The objective of this proposal is to determine the best ways of disseminating disease prevention messages to rural African Americans and other vulnerable populations. The central hypotheses are that minorities have doubts regarding the trustworthiness of these messages and that mistrust can delay the effectiveness of, and innovations in, disease prevention methods. Magnifying and/or delaying disease prevention interventions can lead to increased morbidity and mortality in the this population. The research is non-clinical in nature and involves a multi-state (Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana) data collection effort using a newly constructed instrument to assess residents? level of trust and fear related to disease transmission and where and how they prefer to receive information regarding prevention and treatment strategies. The project will provide health and other organizations with unique information and data on how minority communities access and attend to disease prevention messages and pandemic outbreaks.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.