COVID-19 Testing and Linkage to Care With African American Church and Health Agency Partners

Many multilayered barriers increase risk for COVID-19 among AA including poverty, essential jobs with increased virus exposure, cultural norms (eg, risk denial, medical/contact tracing mistrust), chronic health conditions, and limited access to healthcare and other services/resources. These barriers highlight the need for accessible, trusted COVID-19 testing and linkage to antiviral treatment and care services (LTC; e.g., health, prevention programs, community resources, contact tracing) and to community resources (e.g., food, rent assistance) to help slow COVID-19 spread in AA communities. The AA church is an institution with extensive influence in AA communities and may be an ideal setting for increasing reach of COVID-19 test-to-treat (TTT) interventions with LTC in hard hit AA communities. Yet, no controlled AA church-based studies exist on COVID-19 TTT interventions. The primary aim of this study is to fully test a culturally/religiously-tailored, church-based COVID-19 TTT with LTC intervention condition against a non-tailored education condition on COVID-19 rapid testing rates at 6 months with adult AA church members and the community members they serve. Churches will be matched on membership size, denomination and past participation in church health intervention studies, then randomized to treatment condition. Twelve churches (6 churches per arm; 55 church and 20 community members/church; N=900 total) will participate in the study. Antiviral and contact tracing intentions and use will also be examined at 6 months as secondary outcomes. Other types of COVID-19 testing and linkage to care use will also be assessed. Guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior and Socioecological Model, our community-engaged approach includes trained church leaders delivering a culturally, church-appropriate COVID-19 TTT Toolkit inclusive of digital tools: a) individual self-help materials and automated/tailored text messages; b) ministry group educational information; c) virtual/in-person church services with COVID-19 related materials/activities (e.g., sermons, pastors modeling rapid-self testing, testimonials, bulletins); and d) church-community level linkage to care (LTC) services (e.g., contact tracing, treatment, healthcare, community resources) provided by contact tracers serving as community health workers (CHW). Intervention churches will host 2 COVID-19 TTT events and will also provide members with take-home COVID-19 rapid self-test kits. Potential mediators/moderators related to receipt of COVID-19 testing will be evaluated, and a process evaluation to determine implementation facilitators, barriers, and fidelity related to increasing COVID19 testing rates. Our ongoing meetings with our long-term faith and health partners is enabling us to quickly adapt our AA church-based COVID-19 testing, HIV testing and diabetes prevention interventions for the proposed study. This novel study is the first to fully test a COVID-19 TTT intervention in AA churches. It could provide a theory-based, multilevel scalable model for equipping AA churches to deliver wide-reaching COVID-19 rapid testing and promote treatment with health agency partners.