Title: Assessing Barriers to COVID-19 Vaccination for the U.S. Hispanic/Latinx Population
Authors: Kaitlin Kaluzny, OMSII; Malcolm Cutchin, PhD; Hannah Pollard MLIS, AHIP
Introduction
The United States Latinx population has been disproportionately affected by SARS-CoV pandemic in both case numbers and mortality rates. Though there are gaps in ethnicity data for vaccination reports, the Latinx community still lag behind U.S. White population with vaccine uptake. The goal of this literature review was to assess the barriers to vaccination for the Latinx population and provide insight on how to overcome these barriers, ultimately taking a step forward in eliminating the perpetuating health inequalities among the Latinx population.
Methods
A literature search was conducted using key terms such as “COVID-19 Vaccine”, “Barriers”, “Latinx”, “Hispanic” that resulted in peer-reviewed articles from PubMed, CINAHL, TripPro, and Google Scholar. The search was expanded to gray literature with a thorough examination of pre-prints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, Kaiser Family Foundation, and COVID Collaborative. Articles were excluded that did not address the Latinx population or lacked any data or discussion on barriers with vaccination uptake.
Results
Twenty-one articles were included in the final assessment, with sixteen of them being peer-reviewed, out of the 335 results from the keyword search. The assessment included articles from April 2020 to May 2021 with the majority being observational studies; samples varied but sample sizes tended to be large, greater than 2,000 participants. A common barrier to vaccination for the Latinx community was the concern about side effects and safety of the vaccine. Mistrust in authority and government vaccination efforts was also a common concern for Latinx participants. Furthermore, the Latinx population reported vaccine affordability as a barrier. A fourth major issue was lack of knowledge about the vaccine.
Discussion
Several studies note a higher willingness of Latinx individuals to receive the vaccine yet vaccine uptake among the Latinx population remains lower than Whites, suggesting the access barriers need further investigation. We found some evidence that bilingual staff can be utilized to address the communication/information access barrier as well as lessen the mistrust issue. Some evidence exists that access was also improved by vaccination sites in Latinx neighborhoods. Additional evidence suggests that individuals who experienced discrimination in healthcare reported more vaccine hesitancy. Increasing access and addressing healthcare disparities might lead to enhancing Latinx trust and improving COVID vaccination rates. The limitations of this review include a relatively small literature on the subject, underrepresentation of Latinx populations, and the fact that studies took place at different times and locations during the pandemic which may influence findings.
Thank you for this presentation, Student Dr. Kaluzny. I have been assigned as one of the judges for this project. Can you tell us more about the ways non-Hispanic/Latinx health care providers and physicians can do more to overcome the barriers you identified in this review? Thank you again for this important work.
Thanks for this presentation, I am one of your judges. Did factors such as geographic location or socioeconomic status have an impact on any stratification of vaccine uptake in the Latinx community?
Thank you for your presentation on this important topic, Student Dr. Kaluzny. It seems like many of the barriers identified in the literature are related to the relationships that people in the community have with their health care providers. Do they feel seen/heard/respected? I think the questions Drs. Briggs-Early and Mapes asked are getting at this. Another barrier identified is cost. Could you elaborate on the cost?