Communities Fighting COVID!

Background: This study created and evaluated effective COVID-19 testing uptake strategies that focused on underserved individuals who were exposed but did not access testing, and underserved individuals who were not routinely tested since they were unaware of their exposure or risk status.

Materials/Methods: This study served as an extension to current programmatic contact tracing work among the target populations. Community health workers (CHW) facilitated self-administered COVID-19 tests among participants. The study utilized a multi-period, cluster randomized crossover design, where each cluster was defined as a geographic neighborhood, and individuals within that cluster received either home-based or mobile testing depending on the randomization sequence and timing of the testing strategy.

Outcome/Impact: The study contributed to health disparity reductions in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality while producing high impact through core strengths in drawing on local knowledge, existing community partnerships, use of culturally competent community healthcare workers, point-of-care rapid and inexpensive testing, and the use of geospatial data to prioritize locations for mobile pop-up testing. The focus on underserved populations with high COVID-19 exposures informed future testing and vaccination efforts.