Addressing COVID 19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Rural Community Pharmacies Reducing Disparities Through an Implementation Science Approach

PROJECT SUMMARY The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionally impacted rural communities, which are often health professional shortage areas that lack health care infrastructure, including hospitals1-3. When compared to urban populations, individuals living in rural areas are more vaccine hesitant8,9, have a higher prevalence of comorbid health conditions that increase their risk for severe COVID-19 complications12, and are at greater risk from SARS-CoV-2 variants due to lower vaccination rates and fewer vaccination mandates33,40. Thus, interventions to increase vaccine uptake in rural areas are greatly needed. As the most accessible healthcare professional in rural areas4,5 and one of the most trusted sources of medication information16, community pharmacists are well-positioned to address vaccine hesitancy with underserved, rural populations. Because vaccination conversations are sensitive and often politically charged, pharmacists need implementation support, including training and ongoing guidance to deliver evidence-based vaccine hesitancy counseling interventions18. Implementation facilitation, in which trained facilitators coach and troubleshoot problems with professionals as they implement new practices, increases adoption of practices with fidelity23-26. However, implementation facilitation generally, and virtual facilitation (e.g., video coaching) in particular, has not been systematically studied in community pharmacy settings. The need to examine the effectiveness of virtual facilitation as a means to increase vaccine hesitancy counseling and COVID-19 vaccination is of great importance given the large travel distances to rural areas and social distancing. Our goal is to test if virtual facilitation increases rural pharmacists' ability to implement COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy counseling when compared to a "standard" implementation approach (e.g., training and dissemination of implementation support tools). Using a rural pharmacy practice-based research network (PBRN) that spans 5 southeastern states, we propose two aims. Aim 1 involves a stepped-wedge trial with 30 rural pharmacies to test whether virtual facilitation outperforms the standard approach in increasing: (a) the fidelity with which pharmacists implement the vaccine hesitancy counseling intervention and (b) the number of vaccine hesitant patients who agree to receive the vaccine. Using a project-sponsored data collection system, we will gather data on implementation outcomes, including fidelity and effectiveness. In Aim 2, we will conduct a cost assessment to explore the sustainability of virtual facilitation. We are uniquely positioned to test these competing implementation approaches and leverage rural community pharmacists to engage in vaccine hesitancy counseling in rural communities that have low vaccination rates.