Adaptation of a Community Clinical Linkages Intervention to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Community Case Study

• DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.877593
• Publication Date: 2022-06-22T04:39:47Z
• Authors: Kiera Coulter; Maia Ingram; Abby Lohr; Carlos Figueroa; Gloria Coronado; Cynthia Espinoza; Maria Esparza; Stacey Monge; Maria Velasco; Lee Itule-Klasen; Magdalena Bowen; Ada Wilkinson-Lee; Scott Carvajal
• Keywords: Adult; Community Health Workers; Community-Based Participatory Research; community-clinical linkages; Racial Groups; COVID-19; adaptation; United States; 3. Good health; community health worker; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; Humans; Public Health; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270; Pandemics; community-based participatory research

In this community case study, we describe the process within an academic-community partnership of adapting UNIDOS, a community health worker (CHW)-led community-clinical linkages (CCL) intervention targeting Latinx adults in Arizona, to the evolving landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consistent with community-based participatory research principles, academic and community-based partners made decisions regarding changes to the intervention study protocol, specifically the intervention objectives, participant recruitment methods, CHW trainings, data collection measures and management, and mode of intervention delivery. Insights from this case study demonstrate the importance of community-based participatory research in successfully modifying the intervention to the conditions of the pandemic and also the cultural background of Latinx participants. This case study also illustrates how a CHW-led CCL intervention can address social determinants of health, in which the pandemic further exposed longstanding inequities along racial and ethnic lines in the United States.