Community-Engaged Covid-19 Interventions to Protect and Monitor Children

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT This Administrative Supplement will focus on low-income Black and Latinx children and their families in the Chicagoland metro area. Three reasons drive the need for this additional support. First, the newer COVID-19 variant strains have shown increased susceptibility for children. Second, COVID-19 vaccinations will soon be approved for children under the age of 16, making them the next target for vaccination efforts. Third, schools will be in person starting the fall of 2021, requiring frequent COVID-19 testing for children and their families. Our team has partnered with MobileCare Chicago and the Chicagoland COVID Collaborative to address these issues. MobileCare Chicago is a non-profit organization that provides clinical asthma and dental care using mobile medical clinics (vans) that rotate among schools in a predominantly low-income, minority populations on the south and west sides of Chicago. MobileCare Chicago has recently begun partnering with local health centers to leverage their mobile community facilities to distribute COVID-19 vaccination to adults. The Chicagoland COVID Collaborative is one of 21 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Community Engagement Research Alliance Against COVID-19 Disparities (CEAL) teams. Although led by the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), the Chicagoland COVID Collaborative includes six other co-principal investigators and their institutions. This partnership of academic and community health disparities experts is working together to improve COVID-19 vaccination and engagement in quality therapeutic care and trials for low-income Black and Latinx communities in the Chicago area. Some of the lessons learned to date from earlier CEAL teams and the experiences of the Chicagoland COVID Collaborative are the importance of (1) locating COVID-19 vaccination services in community locations, and (2) using community health workers and other trusted messengers to spend time with individuals discussing their questions and concerns around vaccination, and providing accurate information and problem-solving support. Our proposed work with this supplement will co-locate COVID-19 testing with vaccination efforts directly at schools in low-income Black and Latinx communities in Chicago using the MobileCare Chicago network and clinical vans. Children, their families, community members, and school staff will all be offered COVID-19 testing and vaccination at their local schools. They will also be offered counseling and information on COVID-19 testing and vaccination from trusted staff at MobileCare Chicago. This proposed model leverages the lessons learned and infrastructure from the CEAL and RADx-UP programs to date to enhance both COVID-19 testing and vaccination.