Getting Asian Americans INFORMED To Facilitate COVID-19 Testing and Vaccination

Getting Asian Americans INFORMED to Facilitate COVID-19 Testing and Vaccinations, was a timely project to identify and address sociocultural, ethical and behavioral barriers related to COVID-19 testing and vaccination to enable Asian Americans to make well-informed decisions about getting tested for COVID-19. Asian Americans have experienced among the highest COVID-19 mortality rates when measured in case fatality and proportionate mortality due to COVID-19. Excess COVID-19 related deaths observed in Asian Americans are in part due to under-testing. Asian Americans may face multiple challenges, including sociocultural (limited English proficiency, lack of trust, excess fears and social stigma related COVID-19), ethical (lack of proven benefits of various guidelines, unequal access to testing resources), and behavioral (tobacco and e-cigarette use, other competitive behaviors) factors. The pandemic was rapidly evolving and presented urgent needs to develop highly efficient channels to communicate accurate, easily comprehensive, cultural appropriate and practical information. This application was a supplement to a parent R01 "A Family-Focused Intervention for Asian American Male Smokers", as known to the public as a community-based intervention research program "Healthy Family Project". The Healthy Family Project has provided more than 1,200 smokers and families a family-oriented intervention delivered by lay health workers (LHW) showing efficacies in reducing tobacco use and promoting healthy nutrition and physical activity among Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese Americans. Leveraging the community partnerships and the individual / family-based LHW intervention approaches that were developed, this project achieved three aims: (1) Develop and evaluate "INdividual and Family-Oriented Responsive Messaging EDucation" (INFORMED) intervention in increasing knowledge about COVID-19 testing and decreasing decisional conflicts of getting tested for COVID-19. The INFORMED intervention consisted of two components: a 12-week automated SMS text messaging intervention that delivered 12 weekly messages plus as needed additional messages responsive to updated testing and vaccination guidelines, lay health workers' direct educational outreach via video conferencing to participants. A 2-arm randomized controlled trial that compared INFORMED delivered by LHW educational outreach plus automated text messaging to a text message only condition with 240 Chinese, Hmong and Vietnamese Americans. (2) Conduct in-depth prospective investigation of sociocultural, ethical and behavioral factors related to COVID-19 testing uptake in Chinese, Hmong and Vietnamese American over-time. (3) Explore acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination in these groups to understand the associated sociocultural, ethical and behavioral factors and whether vaccination acceptance is associated with COVID-19 testing behaviors. This study used multiple approaches to understand and address relevant sociocultural, ethical and behavioral factors for COVID-19 testing and vaccination. An important objective of this project was to equip Chinese, Hmong and Vietnamese American communities to be informed of the evolving landscape of the pandemics so as to make well-informed decisions on COVID-19 testing and vaccination.