Sascha Ellington, PhD
Epidemiologist, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) CDC is encouraging people who are pregnant, trying to get pregnant now, or may become pregnant in the future to stay up to date on COVID-19 vaccinations. Latinas have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 with the second-highest rate of cases reaching over 65,000. Learn how COVID-19 vaccinations can provide additional peace of mind for you and your family during pregnancy.
Navigating COVID-19 and Pregnancy
Did you know people who are pregnant or were recently pregnant are more likely to get very sick from COVID-19 than people who are not pregnant? If you become sick with COVID-19 during pregnancy, you are more likely to experience preterm birth and stillbirth and might be at ...
When María Elena Bottazzi left Honduras, she never expected to one day be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Bottazzi is a microbiologist at the Texas’s Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Tex. She, along with Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor Medicine, created the Corbevax vaccine for COVID-19. They wanted to create a unique vaccine that was patent-free and cheaper to produce than the vaccines already on the market. “Peter and I aspire to benefit people, which is why we created a vaccine for the poorest communities in the world. The team that we have built shares the same interest in promoting public health and, obviously, learning at the same time,” Bottazzi said, according to NBC Latino. Bottazzi and Hotez were ...
Forty years after the virus was discovered, an HIV vaccine is finally in development. Moderna and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) are launching the first clinical trial for an HIV vaccine. “The search for an HIV vaccine has been long and challenging, and having new tools in terms of immunogens and platforms could be the key to making rapid progress toward an urgently needed, effective HIV vaccine," said Mark Feinberg, president and CEO of IAVI, according to a press release. This vaccine is particularly impactful for Latinos and other people of color, who are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS and are underrepresented in clinical trials. Learn more about the HIV vaccine clinical trial, how Latinos are impacted by HIV/AIDS, and how clinical trials can ...
COVID-19 vaccination is often deterred by misinformation, from conspiracy theories to exaggerated side effects on social media. Vaccine misinformation is potent among Latinos due to lack of reliable information that is culturally relevant or in Spanish, along with little government outreach. That is why UT Health San Antonio researchers studied a new type of advertisement on Facebook to push people to get vaccinated. They used video testimonial ads of Latino peer role models, like Rosa Herrera, who tout the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine, while providing psychological inoculation by acknowledging misinformation, rejecting it, and receiving the vaccine. Compared to generic vaccine promotion ads from the CDC, the Latino peer model ads yielded a significantly higher rate of ...
For the past two years, COVID-19 has continued to ravage the United States. Data continue to show that Latinos and other people of color are disproportionately affected, amid worsening historical health and social inequities. How can we address this? Let’s use #SaludTues on March 1, 2022, to explore health inequities facing the Latino population over the past two years (and long before that), and share solutions and strategies to promote health equity amid the pandemic! WHERE: Twitter
WHAT: #SaludTues Tweetchat “Two Years Later: How COVID-19 Is Impacting Latinos”
WHEN: 1-2 p.m. ET (12-1 p.m. CT), Tuesday, March 1, 2022
HOST: Salud America! at UT Health San Antonio (@SaludAmerica)
CO-HOSTS: The Children’s Partnership (@kidspartnership); Latinx Voces LLC ...
Healthcare leaders say that the COVID-19 vaccine is the clearest path to end of the pandemic. However, vaccine misinformation spread on social media stands in the way. Many misinformation spreaders target Latino and Black communities, which have historical mistrust and skepticism in government. To combat this increasing threat, the Public Good Projects (PGP) and the New York State Health Foundation (NYSHF) created Project VCTR (Vaccine Communication Tracking & Response). Project VCTR helps track misinformation across different media sources to measure the public’s confidence in the vaccine. Currently, negative attitudes about the vaccine are declining after a strong rise in fall of 2021, according to the dashboard. They produce dashboards and track data affecting ...
COVID-19 continues to burden communities of color, particularly low-income and Latino immigrant populations. Often, these communities have fewer resources and need support and health education to fight COVID-19. That’s why groups like the COVID Community Corps (CCC) were started. “It’s about getting into those really hard-to-reach populations and communities and bringing the information in a very linguistic and culturally competent manner,” said Nayeli Salazar de Noguera, the program outreach manager for the CCC. Through canvassing and educational initiatives, the CCC aims to reach underserved communities and increase public confidence in and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines. Learn how they are building vaccine confidence in low-vaccinated parts of New Jersey!
Launching ...
As the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines continue to be distributed across the country, several states are reporting the demographic makeup of their vaccine distribution numbers. Initially, Latinos made up a very low percentage of those getting a vaccine, despite being disproportionately hurt by COVID-19. However, in the summer and fall of 2021, more and more Latinos got vaccinated, even surpassing the number for Black and white people, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Still, disparities for Latinos persist in different states. Differences in education level, political affiliation, and health insurance also add to the vaccine gap. As some states begin to release data on booster shots, data shows that Latinos are getting ...
A new strain of the COVID-19 virus is spreading, and the Omicron variant has already reached North America, experts say. This is yet another mutation, following the Delta variant, that was first identified in South African researchers. It has quickly spread to other continents. Health experts, such as former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, urge people to not get over-worried too quickly about Omicron, but still take available precautions like getting the COVID-19 vaccine and booster shot. "Is this making people more ill? There's no indication that it is. And in fact, there's some anecdotal information offered from physicians in South Africa that this could be causing milder illness. Now, that could be an artifact of the fact that initial cases seem to be clustered in younger ...
