ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: In fall 2020, community hubs opened in San Francisco, California, to support vulnerable groups of students in remote learning. Our objectives were to (1) describe adherence to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mitigation policies in these urban, low-income educational settings; (2) assess associations between policy adherence and in-hub COVID-19 transmission; and (3) identify barriers to and facilitators of adherence. METHODS: We conducted a mixed-methods study from November 2020 to February 2021. We obtained COVID-19 case data from the San Francisco Department of Public Health, conducted field observations to observe adherence to COVID-19 mitigation policies, and surveyed hub leaders about barriers to and facilitators of adherence. We summarized quantitative data using descriptive statistics and qualitative data using thematic content analysis. RESULTS: A total of 1738 children were enrolled in 85 hubs (39% Hispanic, 29% Black). We observed 54 hubs (n = 1175 observations of children and 295 observations of adults). There was high community-based COVID-19 incidence (2.9-41.2 cases per 100 000 residents per day), with 36 cases in hubs and only 1 case of hub-based transmission (adult to adult). Sixty-seven percent of children and 99% of adults were masked. Fifty-five percent of children and 48% of adults were distanced ≥6 ft. Facilitators of mitigation policies included the following: for masking, reminders, adequate supplies, and "unmasking zones"; for distancing, reminders and distanced seating. CONCLUSIONS: We directly observed COVID-19 mitigation in educational settings, and we found variable adherence. However, with promotion of multiple policies, there was minimal COVID-19 transmission (despite high community incidence). We detail potential strategies for increasing adherence to COVID-19 mitigation.
Subject(s)
COVID-19/prevention & control , Education, Distance , Guideline Adherence , Students , Vulnerable Populations , Adolescent , Adult , Black or African American/education , Black or African American/statistics & numerical data , COVID-19/diagnosis , COVID-19/epidemiology , COVID-19/transmission , Child , Child, Preschool , Cohort Studies , Data Analysis , Data Collection , Education, Distance/organization & administration , Education, Distance/statistics & numerical data , Hand Disinfection , Hispanic or Latino/education , Hispanic or Latino/statistics & numerical data , Humans , Incidence , Masks/statistics & numerical data , Physical Distancing , Poverty Areas , San Francisco/epidemiology , Students/statistics & numerical data , Symptom Assessment , Urban PopulationSubject(s)
Black People/education , COVID-19 Vaccines , Fear , Health Education , Health Equity , Religion , Social Media , Animals , Black People/psychology , COVID-19 Vaccines/administration & dosage , COVID-19 Vaccines/adverse effects , Clinical Trials as Topic/organization & administration , Communication , Healthcare Disparities , Hispanic or Latino/education , Hispanic or Latino/psychology , Humans , Research Personnel , Trust , Vaccines, Synthetic/immunology , Volunteers , American Indian or Alaska Native/education , American Indian or Alaska Native/psychologyABSTRACT
In response to coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in 2020, the national Salud America! Latino health equity program at University of Texas Health San Antonio applied its digital content curation model to create and communicate culturally relevant news, stories, and data to raise immediate awareness and generate action against the pandemic's inequitable impacts on U.S. Latinos. Digital content curation is an emerging public health communication strategy using a systematic, refined process to create tailored online and social health messages and prevent mixed messaging and information overload for an audience. Salud America! curated culturally relevant digital content to raise awareness of the pandemic's inequitable impact on Latinos and promote solutions for health equity, with a unique combination of website blog posts exploring pandemic effects on Latinos, peer-modeled stories of people responding meaningfully to the crisis, podcast episodes and Tweetchats engaging people in COVID-19 solutions for Latinos, action tools and campaigns equipping school leaders to make grassroots changes, and supplying advocates with a local data tool on health equity identification. The digital health promotion intervention produced curated content that spiked program website traffic to record highs, revealing the model's effectiveness in increasing exposure to culturally relevant and action-oriented information for a novel topic.