Developing a Public Health Course to Train Undergraduate Student Health Messengers to Address Vaccine Hesitancy in an American Indian Community

Chassity Begay (), Carmella B. Kahn, Tressica Johnson, Christopher J. Dickerson, Marissa Tutt, Amber-Rose Begay, Mark Bauer and Nicolette I. Teufel-Shone
Additional contact information
Chassity Begay: Center for Health Equity Research, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA
Carmella B. Kahn: College of Population Health, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA
Tressica Johnson: Public Health Program, Diné College, Shiprock, NM 87420, USA
Christopher J. Dickerson: Public Health Program, Diné College, Shiprock, NM 87420, USA
Marissa Tutt: Center for Health Equity Research, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA
Amber-Rose Begay: Public Health Program, Diné College, Shiprock, NM 87420, USA
Mark Bauer: Public Health Program, Diné College, Shiprock, NM 87420, USA
Nicolette I. Teufel-Shone: Center for Health Equity Research, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA

IJERPH, 2024, vol. 21, issue 10, 1-13

Abstract: The purpose of the Diné Teachings and Public Health Students Informing Peers and Relatives about Vaccine Education (RAVE) project was to develop strategies for health communication that addressed COVID-19 vaccine safety for residents of the Navajo Nation. The RAVE project developed a 16-week course using the Diné Educational Philosophy as a framework to train Diné College (DC) public health undergraduate students ( n = 16) as health messengers to share COVID-19 vaccine safety information with unvaccinated peers and relatives. An online community survey ( n = 50) was used to assess DC community vaccination perceptions to guide course development. The two primary reasons survey participants got vaccinated were to protect the health of others [82% ( n = 41)] and to protect their own health [76% ( n = 38)]. A pretest/post-test and a retrospective pretest ( n = 13) were implemented to determine course effectiveness. A finding approaching significance was related to student confidence in being health messengers (9.1% increase). RAVE offers the first example in the published literature of successfully training American Indian undergraduate students in the context of a public health course to contribute to the response workforce during a public health crisis.

Keywords: health messenger; COVID-19 pandemic; public health students; COVID-19 vaccine; Diné; health communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/10/1320/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/10/1320/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:21:y:2024:i:10:p:1320-:d:1492233

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().