Health Communication and Inequalities in Primary Care Access during the COVID-19 Pandemic among Ethnic Minorities in the United Kingdom: Lived Experiences and Recommendations.

Health Communication is critical in the context of public health and this was highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ethnic minority groups were significantly impacted during the pandemic; however, communication and information available to them were reported to be insufficient. This study explored the health information communication amongst ethnic communities in relation to their experiences with primary health care services during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research used qualitative methodology using focus groups and semi-structured interviews with community members and leaders from three ethnic minority communities (African-Caribbean, Somali and South Asian) in Leicester, United Kingdom. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and open-coded. Rigour was determined through methodological coherence, appropriate and sufficient sampling, and iterative data collection and analysis. Six focus groups and interviews were conducted with 42 participants. Four overarching themes were identified related to health communication, experiences, services and community recommendations to improve primary care communication. To address primary care inequalities effectively and improve future health communication strategies, experiences from the pandemic should be reflected upon, and positive initiatives infused into the healthcare strategies, especially for ethnic minority communities.

Research avenues for amplifying Indigenous radio.

In this article, I discuss Indigenous radio's ongoing importance for tribal communities in the US from my perspective as a settler scholar, drawing on multifaceted research into Indigenous radio's programme content and production practices before and during the pandemic. For this research, 'Indigenous radio' refers to radio produced, managed, presented and/ or owned by tribal communities. Other terms in use to describe Indigenous radio include Native American, Indian, or tribal radio, demonstrating that there is not a single universalising term and reflecting a diversity in tribal cultures, languages and practices more generally. Building on this understanding of the inherent diversity of Indigenous radio, I describe the ways in which my overarching research project investigates Indigenous radio holistically, via critical outputs combining a literature review of Indigenous theoretical approaches, an online interactive map of tribal stations and in-depth case studies of tribal stations. Through these, I explore community-building practices of Indigenous radio as produced through what Indigenous theorists Glen Coulthard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2016) term grounded normativity. Building on this avenue of exploration, I suggest the place-based values embedded in Indigenous radio production practices and content can function as everyday acts of resurgence, following Jeff Corntassel's (2012) conceptualisation of ways in which Indigenous resurgence can reinforce a project of decolonisation. To exemplify and situate these arguments, I draw on examples of radio production and practitioner insights from selected tribal stations embodying diverse tribal production practices and content, before turning to focus on pandemic practices in Indigenous radio. When the pandemic emerged, my research focus necessarily widened to include and examine COVID-related practices and programming in tribal radio, enabling reflection on these in the context of a paradigm shift in which the value of tribal radio's community-building work has become acute.