From engagement to ownership: a qualitative study of a community-academic partnership to promote COVID-19 vaccine confidence among Latino/Hispanic communities in New Mexico

This paper describes the Vaccinate with Confidence (VwC) project at the University of New Mexico Prevention Research Center, highlighting the development and implementation of equitable community-academic partnerships to increase vaccine confidence among Latinos/Hispanics in New Mexico. Decades of community based participatory research have provided evidence for the effectiveness of the approach, and yet COVID-19 public health messaging and vaccination campaigns often failed to reach those most impacted by the virus. The VwC project was community-driven and aimed to cultivate an equitable partnership that moved beyond collaboration toward community-ownership. The project was conducted between Spring 2021 and Fall 2022 and consisted of two phases: (1) Phase I (formative qualitative research and intervention development) involved conducting Rapid Community Assessments to obtain baseline data on beliefs, barriers, and motivations regarding the COVID-19 vaccine to collaboratively develop interventions to increase vaccine confidence (2) Phase II (implementation) involved implementing strategies to promote and facilitate COVID-19 vaccination uptake, informed by Phase I. Community partners co-led the project, applied their expertise throughout, and took ownership of the project by jointly developing the intervention and messaging ideas, building on community beliefs, values and practices. At the end of the project, we conducted reflection sessions with community partners to learn from the successes and challenges of the partnership and the synergistic effects of community-led collaboration. Qualitative findings included three principles that support equitable partnerships: discovering and centering the language and values of the community; moving from collaboration to ownership; and acting to address COVID-19 and other existing health disparities.