Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected Los Angeles County and disproportionately impacted Black and Latino populations who experienced disparities in rates of infection, hospitalizations, morbidity, and mortality. The University of Southern California (USC), USC Keck School of Medicine, Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute, USC Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Annenberg School for Journalism and Communication, and Children's Hospital Los Angeles will launch a collaborative public health campaign called VaccinateLA.
Objective: VaccinateLA will implement a community-based, community-partnered public health campaign that (1) delivers culturally tailored information about COVID-19 and available vaccines; and (2) addresses misinformation and disinformation, which serves as a barrier to vaccine uptake. The campaign will be targeted to communities in Los Angeles with the highest rates of COVID-19 infection and the lowest vaccination rates. Using these criteria, the campaign will be targeted to neighborhoods located in 34 zip codes in the Eastside and South Los Angeles. The primary aim of VaccinateLA will be to design and deliver an evidence-based multimedia public health campaign tailored for Black and Latino populations. A secondary aim will be to train and deploy community vaccine navigators to deliver COVID-19 education, help individuals overcome barriers to getting vaccinated (eg, transportation and challenges registering), and assist with delivering vaccinations in our targeted communities.
Methods: We will use a community-based, participatory research approach to shape VaccinateLA's public health campaign to address community members' attitudes and concerns in developing campaign content. We will conduct focus groups, establish a community advisory board, and engage local leaders and stakeholders to develop and implement a broad array of educational, multimedia, and field-based activities.
Results: As of February 2023, target communities have been identified. The activities will be initiated and evaluated over the course of this year-long initiative, and dissemination will occur following the completion of the project.
Conclusions: Engaging the community is vital to developing culturally tailored public health messages that will resonate with intended audiences. VaccinateLA will serve as a model for how an academic institution can quickly mobilize to address a pressing public health crisis, particularly in underrepresented and underresourced communities. Our work has important implications for future public health campaigns. By leveraging community partnerships and deploying community health workers or promotores into the community, we hope to demonstrate that urban universities can successfully partner with local communities to develop and deliver a range of culturally tailored educational, multimedia, and field-based activities, which in turn may change the course of an urgent public health crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
International registered report identifier (irrid): PRR1-10.2196/40161.
Keywords: COVID-19; community engagement; health equity; population health; public health; social media; vaccination; vaccine; vaccine hesitancy.
©Michele D Kipke, Nicki Karimipour, Nicole Wolfe, Allison Orechwa, Laura Stoddard, Mayra Rubio-Diaz, Gemma North, Ghazal Dezfuli, Sheila Murphy, Ashley Phelps, Jeremy Kagan, Kayla De La Haye, Christina Perry, Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati. Originally published in JMIR Research Protocols (https://www.researchprotocols.org), 20.02.2023.