Promoting COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence and Access among Youth Experiencing Homelessness: Community-Engaged Public Health Practice.

Youth experiencing homelessness (YEH) face a wide range of complex barriers to COVID-19 vaccine confidence and access. Describe our process for engaging a cross-sector team centering equity and youth voice; outline our intervention strategies to enhance COVID-19 vaccine confidence and access among YEH; and discuss lessons learned through this community-engaged process. We engaged partners from across sectors, including youth-serving agencies, healthcare organizations, public health organizations, and YEH. We used focus groups, key informant interviews, and other community engagement strategies to develop and implement a series of interventions aimed to increase COVID-19 vaccine confidence and access among YEH. We identified youths' key concerns about vaccine confidence and access. To address these concerns, we implemented four community-driven interventions: youth-friendly messaging, health events, vaccine aftercare kits, and staff training. This community-engaged project highlighted the value of cross-sector partnership and consistent youth engagement in addressing vaccine confidence among YEH.

Citation

Ingie Osman, Renee Sieving, Lauren Vasilakos, Katie Pierson, Asha Elgonda, Trenton Bartlett, Janna R Gewirtz O'Brien. Promoting COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence and Access among Youth Experiencing Homelessness: Community-Engaged Public Health Practice. Progress in community health partnerships : research, education, and action. 2024;18(1):79-89

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PMID: 38661829

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