Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Sep 22, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 22, 2021 - Oct 13, 2021
Date Accepted: Nov 19, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Dec 16, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
COVID-19 Vaccine Perceptions, Intentions, and Uptake in a Prospective College-based Cohort Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine among US young adults, particularly those that belong to racial and ethnic minorities, remains low compared to their older peers. Understanding vaccine perceptions and their influence on vaccination uptake among this population remains crucial to achieving population herd immunity.
Objective:
We sought to also study the perceptions and uptake of the vaccines against COVID-19 among one population of college students, faculty, and staff.
Methods:
As part of a larger study aimed at investigating the dynamics of COVID-19 transmission, serology, and perception on a college campus, participants were asked about their views on the COVID-19 vaccine in February 2021. Vaccination status was assessed by self-report in April 2021. Logistic regression was used to calculate prevalence ratios with marginal standardization.
Results:
We found that non-White participants were 25% less likely to report COVID-19 vaccination compared to White participants. Among those who were unvaccinated, Black and other non-White participants were significantly more likely to indicate they were unwilling to receive the COVID-19 vaccine compared to White participants. The most common reason for unwillingness to receive the vaccine was belief that the vaccine approval process was rushed.
Conclusions:
There are racial differences in perceptions of the COVID-19 vaccine among young adults, and these differences might differentially impact vaccine uptake among young racial and ethnic minorities. Efforts to increase vaccine uptake among college populations might require campaigns specifically tailored to these minority groups.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.