Assessing COVID-19–Related Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Among Hispanic Primary Care Patients: Protocol for a Cross-sectional Survey Study (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Recent epidemiological data indicates that minority groups, especially Hispanic communities, experience a higher rate of infection, hospitalization, and death due to COVID-19. It is important to understand the nature of this health disparity and what socioeconomic or behavioral factors are putting Hispanic communities and other minority populations at higher risk for morbidity and mortality. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this project is to assess current COVID-19-related knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) among a predominantly Hispanic population from the Orange County, California community and identify risk factors that may contribute to increased susceptibility and vulnerability to contracting SARS-CoV-2. METHODS Our community Orange County-wide survey consists of quantitative survey questions in four domains: demographic information, COVID-19 knowledge questions, COVID-19 attitude questions, and COVID-19 practices questions. Survey questions are adapted from recent global KAP studies. Participants are being recruited from Amistad Medical Clinic, a private, primary health clinic group in Orange County that treats a predominantly Hispanic population. Patients recruited during telehealth visits are surveyed remotely by phone and those recruited during in-person clinic visits are surveyed in-person. Surveys are conducted by trained members of the study team who are native to the community setting. RESULTS The first study patient was enrolled on 26 June 2020, and recruitment and enrollment will proceed until 30 October 2020. As of 12 October 2020, we have recruited and enrolled 327 participants, and we project to recruit and enroll 400 participants by the end of the recruitment period. We will conduct data analysis after the recruitment period on 30 October 2020. The study was approved exempt from review by the University of California, San Diego Institutional Review Board on 22 June 2020. CONCLUSIONS Very few current COVID-19 studies focus on the perspective and experience of minority populations. Since Hispanic communities are disproportionately affected by COVID-19, it is important to understand what factors contribute to this disparity and what next steps should be taken to reduce the COVID-19 burden in this population. We believe that our study model of partnering with a local clinic system that serves our study population can be expanded to other settings to compare COVID-19 KAP and associated factors within different minority communities.