SCALE UP Utah II: Community-Academic Partnership to Address COVID-19 Testing and Vaccination Among Utah Community Health Centers

SCALE-UP II was a state-wide, pragmatic study conducted among 11 Community Health Center (CHC) systems and 38 clinics across Utah. These CHCs serve low socioeconomic status, racially/ethnically diverse, and rural/frontier populations. The long-term objective of SCALE-UP II was to increase the reach, uptake, and sustainability of COVID-19 testing among underserved populations. Through RADx-UP Phase I funding (SCALE-UP Utah), the team had established population health management (PHM) interventions that have been used since Jan 2021 to increase the uptake of COVID-19 testing and vaccination among CHC patients. Interventions were based on a PHM approach that uses widely available technology (i.e. cell phones and text messaging). SCALE-UP II built on SCALE-UP Utah PHM interventions and investigated novel interventions (i.e., Conversational Agents; Reactive Patient Navigation) that are tailored to address individuals' hesitancy factors and the interplay between vaccination and testing.