Award Date

December 2023

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Public Health (MPH)

Department

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

First Committee Member

Brian Labus

Second Committee Member

Manoj Sharma

Third Committee Member

Courtney Coughenour

Fourth Committee Member

Ching-Chen Chen

Number of Pages

71

Abstract

In Nevada, COVID-19 vaccines have been widely available to the general population since March 2021; however, even with the wide availability of these vaccines only 40% of the African American population in Nevada has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of May 2023. This is problematic as it has been shown that the African American population is disproportionately affected by COVID-19 with higher rates of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths when compared to other races or ethnicities. Through the literature, it has also been well documented that African Americans may experience hesitancy toward these vaccinations for a multitude of reasons including mistrust of the healthcare system, mistrust of the government, and safety and efficacy concerns. The purpose of this quantitative cross-sectional study was to use the social-ecological model to examine how these known factors related to African American vaccine hesitancy at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and community levels. This study utilized data collected from a previous telephone survey conducted in December 2020 before the COVID-19 vaccines were widely available and before the COVID-19 strains of Delta and Omicron to examine vaccine hesitancy among the African American population in Nevada. The results from this study were analyzed using binary logistic regression analysis. A feeling of worry regarding COVID-19 and a study participant’s age had a significant association with the intent to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. The age group 65 and up had the highest intent and the age group 34-44 had the lowest intent to be vaccinated. A significance value of p < 0.05 and 95% confidence intervals were used to test the associations at the three levels of the social-ecological model. Results from this study may be used by public health officials to create tailored interventions to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates among African Americans in Nevada.

Keywords

African American and COVID-19 Vaccine; African Americans and Vaccine Hesitancy; COVID-19 Vaccine; COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy; Social-Ecological Model and Vaccine Hesitancy; Vaccine Hesitancy

Disciplines

Biostatistics | Epidemiology | Public Health

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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