Gregory Phillips II Receives RADx-UP Grant to Study COVID-19’s Impact on Minoritized Young People

Researchers at the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing (ISGMH) are examining COVID-19 testing and prevention behaviors among racial/ethnic minority and sexual and gender minority (SGM) young people with funding from a new National Institutes of Health initiative. The Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Underserved Populations, or RADx-UP, grant was awarded to Gregory Phillips II, Ph.D., faculty member at ISGMH and director of the institute’s EDIT Program.

Phillips and the EDIT team were among the first to directly study the impact of COVID-19 on SGM populations over the summer via a national survey of SGM individuals and people with HIV. This research found that SGM individuals, particularly those who are also Black, Latinx, and/or Indigenous, were being disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

“We already saw some disparities starting to come up to the surface in this survey. Certain populations were significantly more impacted by COVID-19 and were at the same time less likely to have access to testing and more interested in learning preventive behaviors,” said Phillips.

Amid growing concerns that youth and young adults could start driving infections by returning to schools and colleges, Phillips wanted to look specifically at how these young people were faring and how health interventions could help them keep themselves and their families safe. The nationwide project will launch soon with a survey of 1,250 participants ages 14 to 24, with a primary focus on individuals who are racial/ethnic minorities, sexual and gender minorities, or at the intersection of those identities.

“This project looks at a wide array of youth and young adults to see how COVID-19 has impacted them, their families, and their relationships. We want to know their experience with the virus so far and what kinds of preventive behaviors they are taking. We will use the information we learn to develop a health text messaging intervention that encourages youth and young adults—as well as their families and social networks—to get tested and start using preventive equipment and behaviors,” said Phillips.

One key component to the project will be its focus on Indigenous youth and young adults.

“We are also working with Dr. Nicole Bowman, Ph.D., of Bowman Performance Consulting, who is a world-renowned Indigenous evaluator, a friend, and a key co-investigator in this research, to ensure that Indigenous leadership and values are represented in this project, that everything we’re doing is culturally appropriate and responsive, and that our intervention will be useful and applicable to Indigenous communities,” said Phillips.

The research will begin to address what with Phillips and Dylan Felt, research project coordinator for the EDIT Program, identify as a lack of action to address how COVID-19 may exacerbate existing health injustices among marginalized populations.

“A lot of the disparities we’re already seeing in COVID-19 impacts and outcomes have been predictable because they’re occurring along well-known lines of structural injustice and inequality—like healthcare access, insurance, exposure to daily stress, income, and geography—that might make a person more likely to be impacted by COVID-19. Despite this, we’ve seen very little movement towards actually addressing any of these inequities,” said Felt. “Our hope is that this project will be part of a broader push to ensure an equitable response to COVID-19.”

Community partnerships and the scientific leadership of community organizations are paramount to the project’s recruitment of diverse participants and the effectiveness of its interventions. One such partnership is with the Broadway Youth Center in Chicago, which will help develop and pilot test the text messaging intervention in the local community to get feedback before the researchers expand it nationally. The team has also partnered with YouthLink, a program of CenterLink, which will help lead recruitment efforts to ensure a diverse, national sample of youth participants.

The project’s co-investigators include ISGMH faculty members Kathryn Macapagal, Ph.D., and Lauren Beach, J.D.,Ph.D., as well as Morgan Philbin, Ph.D., of the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. David Garcia, Ed.D., an experienced evaluator and Latinx health researcher, joins the project as a consultant.