Jannette berkeley - patton博士.威尼斯人娱乐城健康公平研究所主任兼医学院生物医学和健康信息系教授，获得了美国国立卫生研究院（National Institutes of Health）为一个项目提供的近220万美元、为期两年的资助 旨在通过与非裔美国人教会和卫生机构合作，增加对COVID-19的检测和治疗。
这项工作是美国国立卫生研究院一项名为快速加速诊断服务不足人群（RADx-Up）的倡议的一部分； 这是一个由社区参与的研究项目组成的联盟，旨在增加服务不足社区获得COVID检测的机会。
这项随机试验将研究一种宗教量身定制的干预措施在激励成年非裔美国教会和社区成员接受检测和寻求COVID-19治疗方面的有效性。
该项目将与堪萨斯城地区的12个社区教堂合作，在牧师的帮助下推广测试，并向他们的会众展示测试是如何运作的。 在其他服务中，教堂还将提供快速COVID检测，并为检测呈阳性的人提供支持和转介治疗。
“Our project will examine whether people really want to get tested and seek treatment if we use a religiously tailored approach,” Berkley-Patton said. “We will work collaboratively with our churches to encourage people to not only get the rapid COVID test, but to get treatment that could potentially help reduce their symptoms and likely keep them out of the hospital.
“We’re hoping this approach can be informative not only for this study but for other types of rapid diagnostics that can lead to treatment, especially if the referral is made quickly and support is provided.”
The new grant-funded study is a continuation of Berkley-Patton’s Faithful Response to COVID-19 project, a two-year, NIH-backed clinical trial that started in January 2021 to promote COVID-19 testing with the African American community with the support of churches and other faith-based and community organizations.
Those efforts were so successful in testing and raising awareness that the Jackson County Legislature awarded a $5 million grant to support Our Healthy Kansas City Eastside, another 威尼斯人娱乐城 Health Equity Institute project that administered nearly 13,000 COVID vaccinations to members of Kansas City’s minority and underrepresented communities in just 18 months. 该县最近在一笔额外的500万美元赠款的支持下，也延长了该计划。
“In the early days of the pandemic, COVID testing was not available to everyone. Access to testing was particularly limited in underserved communities, which led to the NIH initiative RADxUP,” Berkley-Patton said. “In the initial project, we are demonstrating that people will take the test at a church site – and even more so when the efforts are religiously and culturally tailored.”
这项新研究将研究服务不足社区的人们对COVID-19快速自我检测的信念和做法。 研究人员还将研究接触者追踪以及转诊治疗、健康保险和社区资源等护理服务的有效性。
“With this model, many of our Faithful Response materials are packaged in an easy-to-use toolkit that our community partners helped to create, and can be disseminated in print or electronic formats,” Berkley-Patton said. “We’re hoping the toolkit can be widely disseminated across the country if we can show that the first Faithful Response project was effective and double that up with efficacy of the second project.”