Tennessee Community Engaged Alliance Against COVID-19

(TN CEAL)

Aim:

The overall aim of the TN CEAL is to increase our understanding of factors that contribute to the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 in underserved communities of Tennessee and establish effective, community-engaged strategies that increase knowledge, awareness, testing, and vaccine readiness, and begin to address structural inequities and COVID-19 disparities.

The Tennessee COVID-19 Community-engaged Research Coalition (TCCRC) was established in response to an NIH initiative. The TCCRC will coordinate a statewide, community engaged, research response to inform mitigation efforts to reduce the spread and adverse outcomes of COVID-19 among socially vulnerable persons. The TCCRC has brought together 33 academic and community partners across Tennessee (see Appendix B). Many partners currently are involved with COVID-19 research, testing, and prevention activities while others have extensive experience conducting  community engaged research, and/or experience working with vulnerable populations. In addition to co-investigators identified in this application, a number of academic partners not directly involved have participated in discussions leading to the approach undertaken in the proposed study and have expressed an interest in staying involved.

TN CEAL seeks to increase:

• Knowledge about COVID-19

• Awareness of who is at greatest risk

• Precautions that you can take to prevent the spread of COVID-19

• COVID-19 testing so that you can make informed decisions

• Vaccine readiness to address any concerns or questions you might have

• Vaccine uptake

• Promote community immunity

• Participation in COVID-19 vaccine trial so that we have accurate information about how effective the vaccine is for people like you and me

• and address those social challenges that make it difficult to stay safe

Project Objectives:

1. Create and sustain a statewide coalition comprised of community-engaged researchers, community partners, leaders, public health agencies and knowledge holders to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations in Tennessee.

2. Participate in a national CEAL partnership in order to share experiences, core data collection strategies, data elements, standard variables, and best practices.

3. Conduct community-engaged research to understand and address factors that impact the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 in communities that are underserved.

4. Disseminate research findings to a range of audiences, including state CEAL partners, other researchers, health and public health providers, community partners, and persons at high risk for COVID-19.

DISCLAIMER: This research was, in part, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Agreement 1OT2HL156812-01. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the NIH.