Racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in COVID-19 and influenza vaccination in pediatric food allergy.

Background: Current COVID-19 and influenza vaccination-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors remain poorly understood among US children with food allergy-and particularly those from non-Hispanic Black, Latinx, and lower income backgrounds who bear a disproportionate burden by allergic disease. These data are especially relevant due to historical vaccine hesitancy in children with food allergy and an initial contraindication for those with severe allergic reactions to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Objective: We sought to characterize COVID-19 and influenza vaccination-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors in a racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse longitudinal cohort of caregiver-child dyads with IgE-mediated food allergy. Methods: We leveraged the NIH-supported FORWARD cohort, consisting of non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, and Hispanic/Latinx children diagnosed with food allergy to assess COVID-19 testing, vaccination, and influenza vaccine concern and utilization through administering a one-time IRB-approved survey. Results: Non-Hispanic Black participants were less likely than Non-Hispanic White participants to be vaccinated (OR=0.25, 95%CI:0.08-0.75) or tested (OR=0.33, 95%CI:0.13-0.85) for COVID-19 and have the intention to vaccinate their children for influenza (OR=0.42; 0.18-0.98). Over one third of participants reported that they believe their child is at greater risk of complications from COVID-19 vaccination due to food allergy. There were racial/ethnic disparities in the belief that COVID vaccines contain allergenic ingredients such that more Hispanic/Latinx (37%) and Black (37%) participants than White (22%) participants reported this belief (p=.02). Conclusion: The present findings of disparities in vaccination-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors across racial/ethnic, and household income strata suggest that initial reports of COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy within the population with food allergy may be further exacerbated by well-documented, racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic differences in vaccine hesitancy, potentially leading to a greater infectious disease burden in these vulnerable populations. This highlights a need for targeted education and outreach among members of these communities who are living with food allergy.

Aging and the perception of biological motion.

Two experiments examined how observers' ability to perceive biological motion changes with increasing age. The observers discriminated among kinetic figures, depicting walking, jogging, and skipping. The direction, duration, and temporal correspondence of the motions were manipulated. Quantitative differences occurred between the recognition performances of younger and older observers, but these differences were often modest. The older and younger observers' performances were comparable for most conditions at stimulus durations of 400 ms. The older observers also performed well above chance at shorter durations of 240 and 120 ms. Unlike their performance on other 2- or 3-dimensional motion tasks, older observers' ability to perceive biological motion is relatively well preserved.

Aging and the perception of speed.

Two experiments were conducted to explore the potential effects of aging upon the perception and discrimination of speed. In the first experiment, speed difference thresholds were obtained for younger and older observers for a variety of standard speeds ranging from slow to fast. The second experiment was designed to evaluate the observers' ability to discriminate differences in the speed of moving patterns in the presence of significant amounts of noise (the noise was manipulated by limiting the lifetimes of individual moving stimulus elements). The results of both experiments revealed a significant deterioration in the ability of the older observers to perceive or detect differences in speed. While the presence of noise was found to affect the observers' discrimination performance, it affected both younger and older observers' thresholds in a proportionally equivalent manner-the older observers were no more affected by noise than the younger observers.