Evaluating Public Health Interventions to Improve COVID-19 Testing Among Underserved Populations

Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected people from underserved and vulnerable populations such as low-income/uninsured, unhoused, and immigrant communities. These populations in the US are at a higher risk of acquiring COVID-19 because of poverty, type of occupation, greater use of public transit, living in multigenerational housing, lack of access to quality healthcare, and more. Despite greater risk of being infected and dying of COVID-19, those in disadvantaged communities are less likely to get tested. The investigators are collaborating with community partners in Cumberland County, Maine to implement a public health intervention focused on making COVID-19 testing more accessible to underserved populations. The intervention includes a one-time in-person training on how to take an at-home COVID-19 test and then provision of at-home COVID-19 testing kits to make testing more accessible. Five testing kits are provided at the time of training and then provided every two months for a year, for a total of 35 testing kits.

In this study, the investigators will evaluate the impact of the at-home testing kit intervention on COVID-19 testing behavior, knowledge and attitudes. The investigators will accomplish this aim by following a community cohort, with a goal of recruiting 150 participants - 15 participants from each of our 10 population groups of interest (three groups that access different health services for low-income/uninsured, unhoused individuals, and six different immigrant groups). The investigators will administer surveys to the cohort participants every month over a 12 month period. Every month the survey will ask about testing behavior, and every other month the survey will also ask about knowledge and attitudes towards testing. In order to ensure access to COVID-19 tests, the cohort participants will be provided at-home testing kits throughout the course of the study. The primary outcome of interest is "recommended testing behavior," which is defined as taking a rapid COVID-19 test when experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 or after a close contact exposure.

The investigators hypothesize that knowledge about testing, favorable attitudes towards testing, and recommended testing behavior will increase as a result of participation in the study.

Conditions

• COVID-19

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Public Health Intervention Package

The intervention package consists of two components: 1. At the time of study enrollment, participants will attend an in-person training on how to properly take an at-home COVID-19 test. Study staff will verbally walk through the steps of the test with the participant while the participant administers the test on themselves, with the opportunity to ask questions and receive corrective feedback, as needed. 2. To make COVID-19 testing more accessible, participants will be provided five at-home COVID-19 testing kits at the training and then every other month throughout the course of the year-long study for a total of 35 kits.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• MaineHealth

  collaborator OTHER

• Kathleen Fairfield

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Kathleen Fairfield, MD, DrPH · MaineHealth

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2022-04-13

Primary Completion

2023-11-08

Completion

2023-11-08

Countries

• United States

Study Locations