LA County Department of Public Health Covid-19 Outreach Campaign

Background - The LA County Department of Public Health needed to explore perceptions and barriers around the COVID-19 vaccine and understand which sources communities trust most for information about it. Focus Groups were required to guide the Campaign. Concepts needed to be tested for the outreach and communication with Black/African Americans and Latinx in LA County.

Solution: ThinkNow conducted an online survey of adults who have not taken the COVID-19 vaccine and are “on the fence” about getting it. Individuals who were entirely against the vaccine did not qualify for this survey. It was estimated that the percentage of adults in Los Angeles County who are “on the fence” was 30%-40%.

Although the campaign focused on Los Angeles County, we recommended expanding the survey's reach to include residents of the Los Angeles DMA to maximize the sample size and have data to share with Team Friday by the deadline. Note that we still looked at results from LA County by itself to see if there were significant differences from the DMA at large. Our goal was to reach at least n=300 interviews. We also presented an option for n=400.

The survey was offered in English and Spanish, and the sample included a mix of race/ethnic segments. Therefore, we anticipated that the sample would naturally skew younger (under 45).

While developing the questionnaire, we also searched for available secondary data/information on the perceptions and barriers people have about the COVID-19 vaccine to include in the questionnaire.

Result: ThinkNow developed the questionnaire with close cooperation from Team Friday. Each questionnaire’s length was approximately 10-12 minutes and included up to 4 open-ended questions, which we coded.

The deliverables for this study included:

• Project management
• Questionnaire development
• Questionnaire translation into Spanish
• Questionnaire programming and testing
• Hosting/Data collection
• Coding of up to 4 open-ends
• Data processing/tabulations
• Analysis/PowerPoint report with Executive Summary and recommendations