Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

December 23, 2020

Comparison of Knowledge and Information-Seeking Behavior After General COVID-19 Public Health Messages and Messages Tailored for Black and Latinx Communities

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In a randomized trial, participants who identified as Black and Latinx who were assigned to watch public health video messages recorded by a physician of the same race/ethnicity were less likely have knowledge gaps regarding COVID-19 when compared to those who were received messages delivered by race-discordant physicians. Participants were presented videos regarding the symptoms, preventive behaviors, and transmission of COVID-19 by either race-concordant (intervention) or discordant physicians (control) and information in the videos was further tailored based upon self-reported ethnicity. Participants who were presented information by culturally concordant physicians had greater knowledge about COVID (80.3% in the intervention group had no knowledge gap versus 73% in the control group). The study found no further effect of specifically tailoring the messages for either Black or Latinx participants and there were no statistically significant differences by sex within race or ethnicity.

Alsan et al. (Dec 21, 2020). Comparison of Knowledge and Information-Seeking Behavior After General COVID-19 Public Health Messages and Messages Tailored for Black and Latinx Communities. Annals of Internal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-6141