Building Resiliency and Vital Equity (BRAVE)

This project collaboratively partnered with American Indian populations to establish COVID-19 services and resources for American Indian communities. The Building Resilience and Vital Equity (BRAVE) project seeked to partner with American Indian tribal communities in North Carolina to establish COVID-19 services and resources for American Indian communities. The goal of this study was to: 1) understand the barriers and social implications of COVID-19 testing and vaccination among American Indians by designing and implementing culturally sensitive survey tools and intervention materials, 2) implement BRAVE outreach and testing interventions to increase testing in American Indian communities, and 3) analyze data and share back with tribal communities to improve perceptions of COVID-19 testing in the AI community and decrease in vaccine hesitancy.\n\nDesign: This project was broken into 3 phases. Phase 1 relied on an exploratory design, specifically the grounded theory approach, where data was collected through semi-structured interviews with study participants. Interview questions were open-ended to further understand the subjects' perceptions of COVID-19, and the barriers to testing and vaccinations. The perspectives gained from the interviews (individual and/or focus group) were used to further guide the study. In Phase 2, the data collected in Phase 1 was used to develop and deploy health surveys on barriers to COVID-19 testing and vaccination. In Phase 3, the data gathered in Phases 1-2 was used to develop culturally appropriate educational materials and deploy the \"Protect Your Elders\" campaign to educate American Indian communities as part of a behavioral intervention. The objective in Phase 3 was to determine if the PYE campaign increases the likelihood of testing and COVID-19 vaccinations in American Indian communities.