Assessing the Profile of Unvaccinated COVID-19 Individuals in African American and Latinx Communities in Eastern Pennsylvania

  1. Kenya M. Colvin
  2. Kennedy S. Camara
  3. Latasha S. Adams
  4. Adline P. Sarpong
  5. Danielle G. Fuller
  6. Sadie E. Peck
  7. Anthony S. Ramos
  8. Ariana L. Acevedo
  9. Meless A. Badume
  10. Shae-lyn A. Briggs
  11. Tiffany N. Chukwurah
  12. Zanett Davila-Gutierrez
  13. James A. Ewing
  14. Jemimah O. Frempong
  15. Amirah A. Garrett
  16. Steven J. Grampp
  17. Jahasia W. Gillespie
  18. Emmanuel J. Herrera
  19. Emis J. Maddox
  20. John C. Pelaez
  21. Olivia L. Quartey
  22. Fanny Rodriguez
  23. Luis A. Vasquez
  24. Brian J. Piper
  25. Swathi Gowtham

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Abstract

Background

Throughout US history, chronic and infectious diseases have severely impacted minority communities due to lack of accessibility to quality healthcare, accurate information, and underlying racism. These fault lines in the care of minority communities in the US have been further exposed by the rise of COVID-19 pandemic. This study examined the factors associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among African American and Latinx communities in Eastern Pennsylvania (PA).

Methods

Survey data was collected in July 2021 in Philadelphia, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Hazleton, PA. The 203 participants (38.7% Black, 27.5% Latinx) completed the 28-question survey of COVID-19 vaccination attitudes in either English or Spanish.

Results

Out of a total of 181 participants that met inclusion criteria of completed surveys, results indicate that 63.5% (n=115) were acceptant of the COVID-19 vaccine whereas the remainder 36.5% (n=66) were hesitant. Binary logistic regression results showed that age, concern for vaccine efficacy, race, knowledge on the vaccine, and belief that the COVID-19 virus is serious significantly influenced COVID vaccine hesitancy. Minorities were more likely to be hesitant toward vaccination (OR: 2.77, 95% CI: 1.13, 6.79) than non-Hispanic whites. Those who believed the COVID vaccine was ineffective (OR: 8.29, 95% CI: 3.78,18.2), and that the virus is not serious (OR: 8.28, 95% CI: 1.11, 61.8) showed the greatest odds of hesitancy.

Conclusions

Contributing factors of vaccine hesitancy in minority communities were age, concern for vaccine efficacy, and education. Understanding and addressing the barriers to COVID-19 vaccination in minority groups is essential to decreasing transmission and controlling this pandemic.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.02.11.22270504: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsConsent: Investigators obtained verbal consent as well as verbal confirmation of participants being at least 18 years of age prior to survey completion.
    IRB: All procedures were approved as exempt by the Institutional Review Board of Geisinger.
    Sex as a biological variableThe ages of the participants ranged from 18 to over The sample population contained nearly equal amounts of men and women.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Procedures: This study was modeled after previously used surveys found on PubMed and the data was collected using SurveyMonkey.
    PubMed
    suggested: (PubMed, RRID:SCR_004846)
    The data analysis was conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics 28.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)
    Figures were developed using GraphPad Prism 9.3.1 for Windows.
    GraphPad Prism
    suggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Data collection through self-report reflects another limitation as self-assessment of COVID-19 knowledge can introduce biases. Another limitation was access to unvaccinated individuals. Most of the population surveyed had already received the vaccine or were receptive to getting it. We can not discount that some participants holding strong anti-vaccine beliefs [15] were less likely to participate in this voluntary study. Another limitation was the few native Spanish-speaking participants in our sample. Future studies should seek to include sizable proportions of unvaccinated individuals [15] along with the addition of bilingual research assistants and interpreters to their team. Future investigations that include an appreciable number of unvaccinated participants may further clarify the overall profile of unvaccinated minorities, allowing for the development of a more nuanced strategy to address their concerns and encourage vaccine and booster acceptance among all ages [19].

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.02.11.22270504v1 on medRxiv