Developing community-engaged and contextually tailored COVID-19 vaccine messages for Latinos in the Central Valley: The C4 project

Behavior Change and Communication

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Populations worldwide have shifted away from emergency provisions to deal with COVID-19 infections to a period of effective ‘living with COVID-19’. Essential to effective COVID-19 infection management is ensuring ongoing uptake of ‘booster’ vaccinations and promoting vaccine coverage in areas where vaccination rates are low. To do so, health authorities must develop campaigns that use appealing messages to encourage people to get their first-series or booster vaccine, and reduce vaccine hesitancy, a key barrier to vaccination. This is particularly the case in underserved communities where vaccination rates are low and hesitancy is high, such as Latino communities in the California Central Valley. But, to date, messages promoting vaccination and reducing hesitancy have not been designed with the culture and norms of Californian Latinos in mind.

Accordingly, our project brings together a team of expert behavioral scientists to develop vaccination messages that are responsive to cultural aspects of this community (e.g., norms, language) for use in future health authority campaigns to maximize vaccine uptake and reduce hesitancy in this population. The project uses multiple research methods across six related studies that will examine the content current vaccination messages and use evidence from multiple sources including the views of community members, prior research, and behavioral theory to develop culturally responsive messages that are fit-for-purpose in increasing vaccination intentions and decreasing vaccine hesitancy in Californian Latinos. Our research eschews the typical ‘top-down’ approach and adopts one based in community engagement so that resulting messages will be appropriate and tailored to key users.

The final product of our research will be culturally appropriate and community-engaged messages that can be readily adopted by health authorities to promote COVID-19 vaccine or booster intentions and reduce vaccine hesitancy in this population.