‘It’s possibly made us feel a little more alienated’: How people from ethnic minority communities conceptualise COVID-19 and its influence on engagement with testing
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Abstract
The cultural beliefs, practices and experiences of ethnic minority groups, alongside structural inequalities and the political economy play a critical, but overlooked role in health promotion. This study aimed to understand how ethnic minority groups in the United Kingdom conceptualised COVID-19 and how this influenced engagement in testing.
Method
Black (African and Caribbean) and South Asian (Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) community members were purposefully recruited from across the UK. Fifty-seven semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed using principles of grounded theory.
Results
We found that people of Black and South Asian ethnicity conceptualised COVID-19 as a disease that makes them visible to others outside their community and was seen as having more severe risk and suffering worse consequences, resulting in fear, stigmatisation and alienation. Views about COVID-19 were embedded in cultural beliefs, relating to culturally specific ideas around disease, such as ill-health being God’s will. Challenges brought about by the pandemic were conceptualised as one of many struggles, with the saliency of the virus contextualised against life experiences. These themes and others influenced engagement with COVID-19 testing. Testing was less about accessing timely and effective treatment for themselves and more about acting to protect the family and community. Testing symbolised a loss of income, anxiety and isolation, accentuated by issues of mistrust of the system and not being valued, or being treated unfairly.
Conclusion
Health communications should focus on counterbalancing the mistrust, alienation and stigmatisation that act as barriers to testing, with trust built using local credible sources.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.06.21254961: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IACUC: Recruitment and participants: After approval from the author’s institutional ethics committee, initial contact was made with key individuals within community hubs across England; such as charities and community organisations, faith organisations, and women’s centres with high levels of attendance by Black and South Asians.
Consent: Eligibility criteria were being 18 years of age or older, from a Black (African or Caribbean), and South Asian (Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian) background, ability to comprehend and speak English to a sufficient level in order to understand instructions; ability to sign a consent form; and availability to be interviewed via MS …SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.06.21254961: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IACUC: Recruitment and participants: After approval from the author’s institutional ethics committee, initial contact was made with key individuals within community hubs across England; such as charities and community organisations, faith organisations, and women’s centres with high levels of attendance by Black and South Asians.
Consent: Eligibility criteria were being 18 years of age or older, from a Black (African or Caribbean), and South Asian (Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian) background, ability to comprehend and speak English to a sufficient level in order to understand instructions; ability to sign a consent form; and availability to be interviewed via MS Team, Zoom, Skype or phone call.Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.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.
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