Clinical trial NCT04371419: COVID-19 Health Messaging to Underserved Communities
Official title: COVID-19 Health Messaging to Underserved Communities
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Coronavirus
Lead sponsor: National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Massachusetts General Hospital
name: Stanford University
name: Yale University
name: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
name: Harvard University
First posted: 2020-05-01
Enrollment: 14267
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: PREVENTION

Brief summary: Recent data have shown that covid19 is disproportionately infecting and killing African Americans and Latinx people in the United States. The aim of the study is to determine which messages are most effective at increasing knowledge and changing behaviors that can protect individuals and their communities from the virus. To accomplish this aim, we plan to recruit approximately 20,000 Hispanic and African-American individuals and randomly assign them to videos that vary either the sender or the framing of the message, while providing the relevant public health information.

Detailed description: The following procedures will be followed. The research subjects will participate online.

1. Doctors from MGH who express interest in participating will record messages according to our scripts (US Doctors Script African American, US Doctors Script Latinx). They will be instructed to film several different versions each.
2. We will recruit a sample of Latinx and African American study participants from across the country through Lucid, an online survey firm that has access to a large subject pool.
3. Participants will first read a consent script and give us their informed consent (US Doctors Messaging Consent)
4. Participants will then navigate through the following steps

   1. Brief demographics survey questions (US Doctors Messaging Survey)
   2. Videos 1 and 2: Introduction, Acknowledgement, Social Distancing (US Doctors Script African American, US Doctors Script Latinx). Individuals in the control group will not see videos.
   3. Beliefs survey questions (US Doctors Messaging Survey)
   4. Video 3: Masks (US Doctors Script African American, US Doctors Script Latinx). Again, individuals in the control group will not see a video here.
   5. Main outcomes survey (US Doctors Messaging Survey)
   6. Control group is shown a version of all 3 videos at end (US Doctors Script African American, US Doctors Script Latinx).
5. The video messages each participant in one of the treatment groups sees will be randomized on the following dimensions. The different versions are clearly demarcated in the US Doctors Scripts document.

   1. Racial or ethnic identity of the doctor delivering the messages: concordant vs. discordant identity to the subject.
   2. Whether the message includes an acknowledgment of "elephant in the room" issues for each target group: trust in the medical system or fear of deportation.
   3. Whether the social distancing component of the message is delivered by Dr. Birx of the CDC or recorded by the MGH physicians.
   4. Whether individuals are given information about how representative individuals perceive mask wearers of color. This information comes from results of our nationally representative pilot survey.
   5. Some individuals in a control group will only see messages after all surveying has been completed.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria: Hispanic and African-American adult individuals, men and women - oversample of those with less completed education Exclusion Criteria: children, those who do not identify as above

Primary outcomes:
measure: Incidence Rate for Knowledge Gaps: Control vs. Any Intervention
timeFrame: The outcome was measured immediately following the intervention in the 15-minute baseline survey.
measure: Incidence Rate for Information-seeking Behavior: Control vs. Any Intervention
timeFrame: The outcome was measured immediately following the intervention in the 15-minute baseline survey.
measure: Incidence Rate for Knowledge Gaps by Intervention
timeFrame: The outcome was measured immediately following the intervention in the 15-minute baseline survey.
measure: Incidence Rate for Information-seeking Behavior by Intervention
timeFrame: The outcome was measured immediately following the intervention in the 15-minute baseline survey.
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Cambridge
country: United States
facility: JPAL North America
state: Massachusetts
Study officials:
References:
citation: Alsan M, Stanford FC, Banerjee A, Breza E, Chandrasekhar AG, Eichmeyer S, Goldsmith-Pinkham P, Ogbu-Nwobodo L, Olken BA, Torres C, Sankar A, Vautrey PL, Duflo E. Comparison of Knowledge and Information-Seeking Behavior After General COVID-19 Public Health Messages and Messages Tailored for Black and Latinx Communities : A Randomized Controlled Trial. Ann Intern Med. 2021 Apr;174(4):484-492. doi: 10.7326/M20-6141. Epub 2020 Dec 21.