Black and Thriving Project

2023 UPDATE: This project has been completed and archived.

This is a new project which aims to foster a social-contagion intervention that puts the power of choice on voluntary African American participants to share reliable information about COVID-19 vaccines. Our focus on this demographic group is motivated by the disproportionate health and economic disadvantages associated with African Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, young black Americans have one of the lowest vaccination rates and the lowest intent to vaccinate. Our goal is to identify ways in which reliable information about vaccines can be framed and released online to increase the likelihood that it would be shared widely. We are an interdisciplinary team from social science, network science, and informatics with community partners who are working on vaccine confidence in Black Communities. The project is funded by the Vaccine Confidence Fund. Our findings could make health communication efforts more efficient at local, state, and national levels.