Academic-Community Team for Improving Vaccine Acceptability and Targeted Engagement: Public Housing

Vaccinations are critical for preventing infectious diseases such as influenza, meningitis, pneumonia, varicella zoster virus (VZV), and COVID-19. Despite increasing national distribution and promotion of routine recommendations for adult vaccination, coverage remains low, with historically lower uptake among racial and ethnic minorities. This is compounded by higher levels of vaccine hesitancy, which may be attributed to a myriad of issues, including worsening social determinants, medical mistrust, and lack of access to health services. Specifically, African American and Latino public housing residents may benefit from public health campaigns and vaccination initiatives to support high vaccine uptake and confidence. This R01 proposal seeks to expand on a proven, multilevel, multidisciplinary, theoretically based, culturally sensitive, community-engaged intervention by expanding the Academic-Community Team for Improving Vaccine Acceptability and Targeted Engagement (ACTIVATE) program. Guided by a fusion of the Social-Ecological framework (SEM) and the Practical, Robust Implementation and Sustainability Model (PRISM), the ACTIVATE program is inclusive of health factors on the individual, interpersonal, community, and societal level and elements for successful implementation. Led by leadership triads of public housing resident leaders, nurse practitioner students, and public health students, the ACTIVATE program centers on mitigating uptake barriers and non-adherence to vaccination schedules as recommended by the CDC and to increase influenza, meningitis, pneumonia, VZV, and COVID-19 vaccine rates among under-resourced AA and Latino adults in South LA.