Connect: Cultivating Academic-Community Partnerships to Address Our Communities' Complex Needs During Public Health Crises.

BACKGROUND: Black and Latino communities have been disproportionately impacted by coronavirus disease 2019 and we sought to understand perceptions and attitudes in four heavily impacted New Jersey counties to develop and evaluate engagement strategies to enhance access to testing. OBJECTIVE: To establish a successful academic/community partnership team during a public health emergency by building upon longstanding relationships and using principles from community engaged research. METHODS: We present a case study illustrating multiple levels of engagement, showing how we successfully aligned expectations, developed a commitment of cooperation, and implemented a research study, with community-based and health care organizations at the center of community engagement and recruitment. LESSONS LEARNED: This paper describes successful approaches to relationship building including information sharing and feedback to foster reciprocity, diverse dissemination strategies to enhance engagement, and intergenerational interaction to ensure sustainability. CONCLUSIONS: This model demonstrates how academic/community partnerships can work together during public health emergencies to develop sustainable relationships.

Community- Versus Health Care Organization-Based Approaches to Expanding At-Home COVID-19 Testing in Black and Latino Communities, New Jersey, 2021.

At-home COVID-19 testing offers convenience and safety advantages. We evaluated at-home testing in Black and Latino communities through an intervention comparing community-based organization (CBO) and health care organization (HCO) outreach. From May through December 2021, 1100 participants were recruited, 94% through CBOs. The odds of COVID-19 test requests and completions were significantly higher in the HCO arm. The results showed disparities in test requests and completions related to age, race, language, insurance, comorbidities, and pandemic-related challenges. Despite the popularity of at-home testing, barriers exist in underresourced communities. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(S9):S918-S922. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.306989).