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INTRODUCTION: Anti-Asian racism was a feature of the social response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and its impact on the well-being of Asian communities warrants closer examination. The current study aimed to gauge whether the sense of belonging mitigated the adverse effects of racism on life satisfaction for self-identified Asian New Zealanders.METHODS: This analysis included 1341 responses to a cross-sectional online survey conducted in 2021. Descriptive analyses outline how components of a sense of belonging were distributed among participants and those who experienced racism during the Covid-19 pandemic. We used linear regression to examine the role of a sense of belonging as a potential pathway variable in the association between experiencing racism and life satisfaction.FINDINGS: In this survey, four out of 10 participants reported experiencing racism in the first 18 months of the pandemic. Participants' life satisfaction decreased slightly since January 2020 (p<0.001). Experiencing racism was associated with decreased life satisfaction. All the components of sense of belonging reduced the magnitude of this negative association between racism experience and life satisfaction, in particular, expressing one's own ethnic identity and belonging in Aotearoa.CONCLUSIONS: Given that anti-Asian racism is currently a feature of life and a significant stressor during the pandemic, this study provides empirical evidence of the protective role of a sense of belonging against anti-Asian racism. This study focused on Asian members in Aotearoa New Zealand, but its practical implications have the potential to support other minoritised ethnic communities who also experience racism during the pandemic and beyond.
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Background: COVID-19 vaccination is effective at preventing symptomatic infection, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19, but many people have experienced barriers to receiving this life preserving intervention. A study examining COVID-19 vaccination in New York state found that persons with HIV (PWH) were less likely to be vaccinated than the general population. We examined whether PWH are less likely to be vaccinated than persons without HIV (PWoH) in the Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare System. Method(s): We examined COVID-19 vaccination receipt by HIV status in the Veterans Aging Cohort Study (VACS), an open cohort of PWH and 1:2 age-, race/ethnicity-, sex-, and site-matched PWoH. Among participants with a VA encounter from 10 December 2020 to 12 September 2022, we calculated the proportion of individuals who were fully vaccinated and boosted. Fully vaccinated was defined as: 14 days after second dose of mRNA vaccine (either Pfizer BNT162b2 or Moderna mRNA-1273) or single dose of a viral vector vaccine (Janssen Ad26.COV2.S). Boosted was defined as an additional vaccination at least 180 days after full vaccination. We assessed differences using chi-square tests. Result(s): Among 109,421 participants, PWH (n=31,337) were more likely than PWoH (n=78,084) to be fully vaccinated (77.6% vs 68.7%, p< 0.001) and boosted (71.1% vs 63.0%, p< 0.001) (Table). Most people received an mRNA vaccine with 6.9% of fully vaccinated PWH and 7.5% of fully vaccinated PWoH receiving the Janssen vaccine. Among PWH, having an undetectable HIV viral load was more common in those fully vaccinated than those not fully vaccinated (79.4% vs 72.0%, p< 0.001). Conclusion(s): In a matched cohort of veterans with and without HIV in VA care, we found that PWH were more likely than PWoH to be fully vaccinated and boosted. These findings contrast with a New York state study which found lower COVID-19 vaccination rates in PWH, possibly due to differential healthcare access;all patients in our cohort have access to VA care. Further studies are needed to understand differences in vaccine acceptance and receipt to prevent COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. COVID-19 Vaccination in People with HIV (PWH) and People without HIV (PWoH) - Veterans Aging Cohort Study, as of 12 September 2022.
ABSTRACT
Background: It is not known if people with HIV (PWH) in the United States (US) have different access to SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR (COVID-19) testing, or positivity proportions (among those tested), than people without HIV (PWOH). We describe COVID-19 testing and positivity proportions in 6 large geographically and demographically diverse cohorts of PWH and PWOH. Methods: The Corona-Infectious-Virus Epidemiology Team (CIVET) is comprised of five COVID-19 clinical cohorts within a health system (Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland, CA;Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic States, Rockville, MD;University of North Carolina Health, Chapel Hill, NC;Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN;Veterans Aging Cohort Study) and one established classical HIV cohort (MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study). Each participating cohort is restricted to individuals who were alive and “in-cohort” in 2020 (definitions of which were operationalized to fit the structure of each cohort). We calculated the percentage of patients in-cohort who were COVID-19 tested, and the proportion COVID-19 positive monthly, by HIV status, from March 1 to August 31, 2020. We report findings from the classical cohort separately because results are based on self-reported information. Results: In the 5 clinical cohorts, PWH ranged from N=2,515 to 31,040, and N=77,019 to 3,710,360 PWOH. Over the 6 month study period, the percentage of PWH who were tested for COVID-19 (13.5%-21.2%) was slightly higher than PWOH (10.8%-14.3%) in each of the cohorts (p-values in each cohort <0.001). However, among those tested, the percentage of patients with positive COVID-19 tests was similar regardless of HIV status (Figure). In the classical cohort that contributed self-reported testing and positive information (PWH N=2,222;PWOH N=1,417), the proportion tested was similar by HIV status (PWH 38.1% vs. PWOH 37.4%), but PWH had a greater positivity proportion (9.0%) compared with PWOH (5.3%, p-value=0.012). Conclusion: Although PWH had higher testing rates compared with PWOH, we did not find evidence of increased positivity among those tested in 5 clinical cohorts with large diverse populations across the US. We will continue to monitor testing, positivity, and COVID-19 related health outcomes in PWH and PWOH using our multiple data sources and leveraging the expertise of established longitudinal cohort studies in the CIVETS collaboration.