Strategies That Promote Equity in COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake for Black Communities: a Review

Black communities have had a high burden of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and death, yet rates of COVID-19 vaccine uptake among Blacks lag behind other demographic groups. This has been due in part to vaccine hesitancy and multi-level issues around access to COVID-19 vaccines. Effective strategies to promote vaccine uptake among Black communities are needed. To perform a rapid review covering December 2020–August 2021, our search strategy used PubMed, Google, and print media with a prescribed set of definitions and search terms for two reasons: there were limited peer-reviewed studies during the early period of vaccine roll-out and real-time perspectives were crucially needed. Analyses included expert opinion, descriptions of implemented projects, and project outcomes. The strategies described in these reports largely converged into three categories: (a) addressing mistrust, (b) combatting misinformation, and (c) improving access to COVID-19 vaccines. When working to reduce hesitancy, it is important to consider messaging content, messengers, and location. To address mistrust, reports detailed the importance of communicating through trusted channels, validating the real, history- and experience-based reasons why people may be hesitant to establish common ground, and addressing racism embedded within the healthcare system. To combat misinformation, strategies included dispelling myths and answering questions through town halls and culturally intelligent outreach. Black physicians and clinicians are considered trusted messengers and partnering with community leaders such as pastors can help to reach more people. The settings of vaccination sites should be convenient and trusted such as churches, barbershops, and community sites. While a number of individual and combination efforts have been developed and implemented, data that disentangle components that are the most effective are sparse. This rapid review provides a basis for developing strategic implementation to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake in this ongoing pandemic and planning to promote health equity for future bio-events and health crises.

Making the Case for Democracy

Political entrepreneurs put liberal democracy under pressure by fueling concerns and exploiting citizens’ fragile commitment to this system of government. As difficult trade-offs are made apparent in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, we investigate one communicative strategy that political elites who want to defend the principles and practices of self-governance in pluralist societies can pursue. We propose “democratic persuasion” as an actionable, theory-driven intervention to increase the resilience of citizens' commitment to liberal democracy. "Democratic persuasion" requires that legislators actively make the case for democracy and discuss inherent trade-offs while engaging existing doubts and misperceptions. We invited citizens on facebook to attend one of sixteen Zoom townhalls organized in collaboration with members of the German parliament. Each legislator conducted two town halls and we randomly assigned the townhall, where they employed "democratic persuasion". Results suggest that “democratic persuasion” increases support for liberal democracy among citizens in the short term.

When Advocates are Forced to go Virtual: The Long-Term Care Ombudsman Response to COVID 19

This study explores strategies used by the nation’s Long-Term Care (LTC) Ombudsman Programs (LTCOP) to perform their grass roots, investigatory, sentinel defense advocacy during the near total COVID LTC lock out from March 13th 2020 through September 17th, when the “ban” was conditionally lifted. Our layered systematic searches by title, subject, and total text for unrestricted allusions to the LTCOP used the multi-disciplinary database Academic Search Ultimate that includes mass media. Selection criteria included print and broadcast news. Search keywords were “ombudsman” singly and with 10 other terms. This was augmented by reviewing the National LTC Ombudsman Resource Center (NORC) clearinghouse information website and by interviewing NORC staff. Resulting (172) media entries (92% print) were manually coded independently by a team of five, and iteratively reconciled according to a simple flat frame format to identify key words and associated themes. Four main LTCOP lock out strategies emerged: (1) virtual resident interventions (via phone, Skype, Zoom, in-facility allies); (2) public outreach (services provided, sharing COVID data and best practices, social isolation threats and mitigation efforts [window visits], need for volunteers); (3) systems advocacy (state/federal; CMS, legislative and other testimony about social isolation, CARES Act check problems, visitation issues; and (4) partnering with others (multi-agency planning groups, task forces, Zoom town halls, interstate information sharing). NORC interviews revealed that older LTCOP volunteers are seizing the COVID lock-out to retire undermining an already short-staffed network—so calls for volunteers were evident in about 25% of all stories regardless of any other focus.

The concreteness of social knowledge and the quality of democratic choice

Democracy relies on citizens who are politically knowledgeable and engaged. However, when a voter gains political knowledge regarding important issues, through television, town halls, or social media, she also learns that there are many other politically knowledgeable voters, highlighting the importance of social knowledge in political participation. Will a voter with concrete—as opposed to hypothetical—knowledge about other voters’ political knowledge have an increased incentive to participate? Or instead, will concrete social knowledge about other voters actually inhibit participation? In this article, we develop a novel experimental design that focuses on whether concrete knowledge about other voters’ political knowledge influences political participation. Our main result shows that concrete social knowledge decreases individual voters’ willingness to vote, and thereby reduces the probability democracy chooses the majority preferred alternative, i.e. the quality of democratic choice.

RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE FORMATION OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE FIRST TOWN HALLS

The article considers the history of the origin and formation of the town hall architecture as the first building of local governments. Over the past century, most town hall buildings have lost their historical significance. This process is due to the improvement of local government in Europe. In addition, the reason for this was the development of autonomy of city government and civil liberties. This process was also influenced by the democratization of the life management procedures of the urban community. From the beginning of its existence, the town hall was formed as the main public space of the city. This space was a place of judicial and public gatherings; the town hall was a centre of trade, as well as a core of theatrical and cultural events. Some town halls had a system of spaces of social interaction, such as closed halls, open and semi-open public rooms. The tendency of concentration of administrative institutions and service enterprises developed. This development took place through the integration of functional, spatial, organizational and technological structures into a single public-administrative complex. In modern town hall buildings, such components as assembly halls, session halls, exhibition halls, museum premises, offices of the City government and offices of fractions are kept until now.

Incorporating Digital Solutions to Foster Greater Remote Engagement with Personnel

Like most business sectors, the oil and gas industry had to adapt to virtual meetings and working from home in the new reality of the global COVID-19 pandemic. This has introduced new complications to completing activities that traditionally require personnel to be on site and collaborate in teams. This paper reviews digital initiatives that allow workers to collaborate virtually on EHS (Environmental, Health, & Safety)-driven practices such as safety audits and engage remotely for improved morale. Specifically, the paper reviews the recent implementation of digital connectivity solutions for remote workers to join virtual ‘Safety Walk and Talks’ in processing facilities and offshore platforms. It also reviews programs to promote connectivity between workers, including virtual town halls and online coffee-hours conversations. While these digitally enabled remote engagement initiatives are still relatively new, they have quickly provided benefits to the safe operation of offshore assets and the morale and mental wellbeing of the workforce. The first virtual ‘Safety Walk and Talk,’ which was conducted in Indonesia, brought together a cross-functional team that was split between a few in-person attendees and a majority of people joining virtually from remote locations. While the digital connection was not seamless, this first-of-its-kind virtual meeting proved the concept. The process improves EHS metrics by minimizing travel of teams to and from the site. It also keeps more people out of potentially hazardous work environments and minimizes exposure to coronavirus or other health hazards. Other digital connectivity measures such as virtual town halls and worker-submitted videos have increased engagement between management, workers, and teams located around the globe. A virtual ‘Coffee Roulette’ program, in which workers spin a virtual wheel that connects them with other employees for informal chats, has allowed people to make new connections and feel less isolated.