Active Medical Learner Engagement Results in the Discovery That One Size Does Not Fit All in Overcoming COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy

Abstract

Vaccine hesitancy is an ongoing public health concern defined as the refusal of a vaccine that is readily available. Therefore, we developed a project to explore why patients in a safety net medical center were hesitant or refused the COVID-19 vaccine. The project was conducted by healthcare learners to promote “learning by doing”. Responses were collected through a previously developed and ongoing survey among both hospitalized and ambulatory patients that had no previous history of COVID-19 infection, were currently infected, or had recovered from COVID-19. Results were analyzed using a priori power analysis and Chi-squared test. We discovered that different self-reported ethnic groups had different reasons for vaccine hesitancy; specifically, 69% of Black/African American respondents stated that their main reason for hesitancy was vaccine safety compared to 13.9% of non-Hispanic Whites (p = 0.005). Furthermore, our cohort was significantly more likely to disagree rather than agree with the statement: “getting vaccinated is important for the health of others in my community”(p = 0.016). The learners discovered that a more specific approach to vaccine education would be required to understand and overcome vaccine hesitancy in our cohort of socioeconomic and ethnically diverse groups.

Keywords

• COVID-19
• vaccine hesitancy
• race
• determinants
• SARS-CoV-2
• vaccine acceptance