Austin Peay SHAs | HBCU Wellness Project, Tenn.

Austin Peay University

Clarksville, Tennessee

Lessons learned from this project are:

It is difficult to gather student participants to meet at a scheduled time due to the variety of each individual's schedule.
More individuals were willing to participate when they were able to do on their time and at their discretion. As indicated with the Google survey gathering 67% of participants.
The majority of participants indicated that they were willing to receive the vaccine but wanted to wait for others to receive it first in fear of potential side effects.

Lessons learned from this project include:

People perceptions of what COVD-19 is varies depending on life experiences and where they get their news and information.
It is important to be sensitive and understanding of the target audience beliefs in health care, policies, and in a crisis. Reassuring the audience that they are entitled to their opinion when it comes to changes in health and ways of living is crucial.
Offering insight, answers and, reliable resources to the community will be the gateway of change during COVID-19. In the target population there was more to lose than to gain.
By offering updated resources to the community it will provide possible attitude and behavioral change of the spread of COVID-19 and willingness to receive the vaccine.
It is easier to persuade and promote health change to target audience when there is more evidence-based information, more research conducted, and less fear- based news provided.

Lessons learned from this project include:

Community Partners advertising helped me gain a larger audience for my research
Voluntary research is more difficult then if you were to find your subjects for the research
Participants are less likely to join in the study I performed without receiving something in return for their time
African American men and women participants are wary of the vaccine and most are not willing to take it after it becomes available
A large Majority of the participants get the flu shot but are not willing to receive the Covid – 19 vaccine

Lessons learned from this project are:

The easiest form of communication during this research was through social media (APSU student forum).Response times have the potential to be almost instant.
It is difficult to get participants in the assisted living community due to the lack of interest and capability to partake in the listening sessions.
Covid-19 restrictions set in place by facilities has made it difficult to visit and gather information from the assisted living communities due to their vulnerability to the virus.
It is also difficult to gather participants on campus due to inconvenience and lack of interest to partake. With social media, students feel it is less time-consuming to provide feedback due to the lack of interaction
Getting to do this research has allowed me to better understand the effects on certain demographics that I may not have had the opportunity to be exposed to before.