{"doi":"10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.16796","title":"Effectiveness of a COVID-19 Testing Outreach Intervention for Latinx Communities","abstract":"Importance: Latinx individuals have been disproportionately affected during the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the spread of SARS-CoV-2. It is imperative to evaluate newly developed preventive interventions to assess their effect on COVID-19 health disparities. Objective: To examine the effectiveness of a culturally tailored outreach intervention designed to increase SARS-CoV-2 testing rates among Latinx populations. Design, Setting, and Participants: In this cluster randomized trial performed from February 1 to August 31, 2021, in community settings in 9 Oregon counties, 38 sites were randomized a priori (19 to the community health promoters intervention and 19 to outreach as usual wait-listed controls). Thirty-three sites were activated. A total of 394 SARS-CoV-2 testing events were held and 1851 diagnostic samples collected, of which 919 were from Latinx persons. Interventions: A culturally informed outreach program was developed that made use of promotores de salud (community health promoters) to increase Latinx SARS-CoV-2 testing. Strategies addressed barriers by disseminating information on testing events in English and Spanish, mitigating misinformation, and increasing trust. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcomes were the count of sample tests from Latinx persons and the sampled proportion of the Latinx populace. Site-level covariates included census tract Latinx populace, nativity (number of US-born individuals per 100 population), median age, and income inequality. Time-varying covariates included number of new weekly SARS-CoV-2-positive cases and percentage of vaccine coverage at the county level. Results: A total of 15 clusters (sites) were randomized to the control group and 18 to the community health promoters group. A total of 1851 test samples were collected, of which 995 (53.8%) were from female participants and 919 (49.6%) were from Latinx individuals. The intervention tested 3.84 (95% CI, 2.47-5.97) times more Latinx individuals per event than controls (incident rate ratio, 0.79; 95% CI, 0.46-1.34; Cohen d = 0.74; P < .001). The intervention was associated with a 0.28 increase in the proportion of Latinx populace being tested compared with control sites for the dependent variable scaled as the proportion of the Latinx populace ×100, or a 0.003 proportion of the raw populace count. The use of a standardized scaling of the proportion of Latinx individuals showed that the relative percentage increase was 0.53 (95% CI, 0.21-0.86) in the intervention sites compared with controls, representing a medium effect size. Conclusions and Relevance: To our knowledge, this was the first randomized evaluation of an outreach intervention designed to increase SARS-CoV-2 testing among Latinx populations. Findings could be used to implement strategies to reduce other health disparities experienced by these groups. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04793464.","journal":"JAMA Network Open","year":2022,"id":248136,"datarank":0.9128915248542256,"base_score":3.4657359027997265,"endowment":3.4657359027997265,"self_citation_contribution":0.519860385419959,"citation_network_contribution":0.3930311394342666,"self_endowment_contribution":0.519860385419959,"citer_contribution":0.3930311394342666,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":31,"citer_count":17,"citers_with_citation_signal":11,"citers_with_endowment":11,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9611,"is_data_producer":true,"deposit_databanks":{"ClinicalTrials.gov":["NCT04793464"]},"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":422081,"name":"Stephanie De Anda","orcid":"0000-0003-3791-9494","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":427843,"name":"Camille C. Cioffi","orcid":"0000-0003-2424-7473","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":388602,"name":"Hannah F. Tavalire","orcid":"0000-0002-5235-0008","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":10209,"name":"J. Searcy","orcid":"0000-0003-3544-3066","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":388603,"name":"Elizabeth L. Budd","orcid":"0000-0003-4854-3795","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":886845,"name":"Ellen Hawley McWhirter","orcid":"0000-0002-9670-3629","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":886846,"name":"Anne Marie Mauricio","orcid":"0000-0002-0818-3249","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":886847,"name":"Sven Halvorson","orcid":"0000-0001-7375-6843","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":687756,"name":"Emily A. Beck","orcid":"0000-0001-9810-5094","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":887541,"name":"Llewellyn Fernandes","orcid":null,"position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":687759,"name":"Mark Currey","orcid":"0000-0003-3688-7208","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":886848,"name":"Jorge Garcia","orcid":"0000-0002-0374-5468","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":666912,"name":"William A. Cresko","orcid":"0000-0002-3496-8074","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":275845,"name":"Leslie D. Leve","orcid":"0000-0003-3061-4524","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":427844,"name":"David S. DeGarmo","orcid":"0000-0001-8449-3057","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":28,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:24:09.893688Z","pmid":"35708690","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}