Self-reported COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and uptake among participants from different racial and ethnic groups in the United States and United Kingdom.

Wenjie Ma, Andrew T Chan, Denis Nash, Somesh Selvachandran, Christina Y Hu, Erica T Warner, Christina M Astley, Adjoa Anyane-Yeboa, Carole H Sudre, Lorenzo Polidori, Kai Wang, Sohee Kwon, Chun-Han Lo, Tim D Spector, Jordi Merino, David A Drew, Amit D Joshi, Long H Nguyen, Sebastien Ourselin, Mark S Graham, Paul W Franks, Cristina Menni, Richard Davies, Jonathan Wolf, Claire J Steves

Journal: Nature communications 2022;13(1):636

PMID: 35105869

Abstract

Worldwide, racial and ethnic minorities have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 with increased risk of infection, its related complications, and death. In the initial phase of population-based vaccination in the United States (U.S.) and United Kingdom (U.K.), vaccine hesitancy may result in differences in uptake. We performed a cohort study among U.S. and U.K. participants who volunteered to take part in the smartphone-based COVID Symptom Study (March 2020-February 2021) and used logistic regression to estimate odds ratios of vaccine hesitancy and uptake. In the U.S. (n = 87,388), compared to white participants, vaccine hesitancy was greater for Black and Hispanic participants and those reporting more than one or other race. In the U.K. (n = 1,254,294), racial and ethnic minority participants showed similar levels of vaccine hesitancy to the U.S. However, associations between participant race and ethnicity and levels of vaccine uptake were observed to be different in the U.S. and the U.K. studies. Among U.S. participants, vaccine uptake was significantly lower among Black participants, which persisted among participants that self-reported being vaccine-willing. In contrast, statistically significant racial and ethnic disparities in vaccine uptake were not observed in the U.K sample. In this study of self-reported vaccine hesitancy and uptake, lower levels of vaccine uptake in Black participants in the U.S. during the initial vaccine rollout may be attributable to both hesitancy and disparities in access.

© 2022. The Author(s).

Address: Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.; Division of Gastroenterology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.; Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.; Diabetes Unit and Center for Genomic Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.; Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.; Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA.; Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.; School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King's College London, London, UK.; Zoe Ltd, London, UK.; Department of Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology, King's College London, London, UK.; Computational Epidemiology Lab and Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.; Harvard/MGH Center on Genomics, Vulnerable Populations, and Health Disparities, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.; Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health (ISPH), City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, USA.; Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, USA.; Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden.; Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. [email protected].; Division of Gastroenterology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. [email protected].; Department of Immunology and Infectious Disease, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA. [email protected].; Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness, Cambridge, MA, USA. [email protected].
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