Carina Márquez, a Associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, he believes strongly in prevention. That’s why he was happy when health authorities in the United States and Europe approved the first vaccines against respiratory syncytial virus last year. RSV vaccines have the potential to reduce thousands of hospitalizations and deaths associated with the virus in the US every year. But vaccines are only effective if they reach the arms of the people who need them most. “It’s really important to ensure that people have equal access,” Márquez says. “Inequalities in access result in inequalities in hospitalizations and deaths.”
There are currently three vaccines available in the United States: GSK’s Arexvy and Moderna’s mRESVIA are approved for use in older adults, and Pfizer’s Abrysvo for older adults and pregnant women, but disparities in their uptake are already emerging. Hispanic and black seniors lag behind their white peers, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although the CDC recommends an RSV vaccine for everyone age 75 and older, only 19 percent of Hispanics in this age group have been vaccinated so far this year, compared to 35 percent of whites, 31 percent of Asians and 24 percent of blacks.
This worries Márquez, who witnessed how varied access and trust in Covid-19 vaccines may have worsened health outcomes of Latinos and African Americans during the pandemic. While research on racial disparities in RSV infections is limited, a study suggests RSV affects Latinos, blacks, and Native Americans at younger ages than white Americans. “The time to act is now,” he says. “Especially in light of the distrust or hesitancy that has arisen after the Covid vaccine.”
This October, Márquez will launch a five-year program National Institutes of Health Study investigate the best way to motivate one community in particular, Latinos in San Francisco, to get vaccinated. Preliminary data it collected last year from 300 survey participants found that many were interested in the RSV vaccine, but that there was also a “big call for more information.”
It will be critical to identify and address specific concerns around RSV vaccines. “As this is a new vaccine for our seniors, we need to understand the most effective approaches to facilitate its adoption,” said Diane Havlir, chief of the division of infectious diseases and HIV at Zuckerberg General Hospital in San Francisco, who is collaborating on the study. . “Vaccine uptake is most effective when it is tailored and provided in the context of cultural norms and beliefs.”
Márquez’s study will disseminate surveys in which participants will be asked questions not only about concerns about vaccine safety but also about specific demographics. “The Latino community is quite heterogeneous and to adapt interventions we need more disaggregated data,” says Márquez. Characteristics such as language, how long someone has been in the U.S., whether they are insured and how they get their health information could determine how they learn about the vaccine. “Thinking about social networks, especially those of older adults, is going to be key.”
Márquez hypothesizes that older Latino adults may receive health information from family, friends, and community organizations more than from social media campaigns, which may be a useful tool for targeting younger communities. The study seeks to find out whether a grandchild could encourage a grandparent to get vaccinated, for example, based on previous evidence that personally knowing someone who received the vaccine is an effective motivator.