Announcing COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Pilot Awardees We're pleased to announce the awardees of our COVID Vaccine Hesitancy Pilot Program! When community partners of the CTSI Community Engagement Program expressed concern about conducting a successful COVID-19 vaccination campaign for BIPOC communities, the CTSI responded with this RFA for vaccine hesitancy. The goal of the RFA was to provide a timely and actionable COVID-19 vaccine communication strategy for the BMC health system’s BIPOC communities and other health systems that serve similar populations.  Read More

Katherine A. Gergen Barnett, MD Clinical Associate Professor, Family Medicine (BUSM)

Using Community Storytelling to Understand, Address and Begin to Heal Medical Distrust and Vaccine Hesitancy in BIPOC Communities In this pilot grant, Dr. Gergen Barnett is partnering with the community-based organization, Everyday Boston, and using the powerful tool of storytelling as a means of better surfacing and understanding both historical and present-day medical distrust in BIPOC communities. This pilot will use both restorative justice storytelling circles with BIPOC leaders, BIPOC community members, and health providers as well as one on one interviews. The narrative analysis of these stories will then be used to 1) generate a curriculum that increases the cultural competency of health providers; helps them to build trust with their BIPOC patients; and ultimately leads to better health outcomes, including increasing COVID-19 vaccine readiness; and 2) to shape and disseminate PSAs to name and increase awareness around unspoken concerns of medical distrust in BIPOC communities.

Rebecca B. Perkins, MD, MSc Associate Professor, Obstetrics & Gynecology (BUSM) Natalie P. Joseph, MD, MPH Clinical Associate Professor, Pediatrics (BUSM)

COVID-19 Vaccine Attitudes and Message Preferences (CAMP) We aim to understand factors affecting healthcare workers’ attitudes toward and informational needs around readiness to (1) accept vaccination for themselves and (2) recommend vaccination for high-risk patients. We will use mixed methods to understand the attitudes of healthcare workers to COVID-19 vaccines for themselves and their high-risk patients, identify barriers and facilitators of vaccine acceptance, and elucidate informational needs and preferred messaging strategies to support vaccination

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Boston University – Clinical and Translational Science Institute  Accelerating Discoveries Towards Better Health  bu.edu/ctsi | ncats.nih.gov