Community-engaged Approaches to Testing in Community and Healthcare Settings for Underserved Populations

The pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has resulted in substantial global morbidity and mortality including in Oklahoma and caused unprecedented interruptions in nearly all aspects of our lives. The population of the state of Oklahoma is at particular risk to SARS-CoV-2 due to its large rural population, strained healthcare system, and poor overall health. The Community-Engaged Approaches to Testing in Community and Healthcare Settings for Underserved Populations (CATCH-UP) program will involve both practice-based and community-based approaches to maximize the reach of the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics - Underserved Populations (RADx-UP) consortium, broaden the potential perspectives that could be captured, and compare the effectiveness of strategies. The interventions will be pragmatic to allow CATCH-UP to respond to changing attitudes, barriers, and environments as the pandemic progresses as well as expected technology developments to produce more effective viral testing that can provide rapid results to patients. The investigators will assist 50 small primary care practices to implement guidelines-based testing and patient education about Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and risk mitigation strategies. The project's community-based approach is designed to rapidly respond to community testing needs by deploying mobile testing sites that will provide operational support to increase the efficiency and the existing capacity for state-wide testing by Oklahoma's public health authorities. Together, the investigators estimate that the CATCH-UP program will result in at least 105,000 SARS-CoV-2 tests performed during the first year of implementation. A comprehensive, ongoing evaluation will be performed to analyze patient and provider attitudes, barriers and facilitators of viral testing, identified health disparities caused by COVID-19, effectiveness of the intervention in both settings, and to allow robust collaboration with other RADx-UP consortium sites.