ASU Receives $4.7M NIH Grant To Provide COVID-19 Tests To Minority Communities
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The coronavirus pandemic has hit American Indians, African Americans and Latinos especially hard. But those communities often lack access to — or trust in — testing resources. Now, with a grant from the National Institutes of Health, ASU could help address that shortfall.
The $4.7 million grant will support efforts to administer 29,000 saliva tests in minority communities statewide.
"There wouldn't be a bunch of academics explaining to them why it's important to get tested. This would be a neighbor talking to them," said Flavio Marsiglia, project lead and director of ASU's Global Center for Applied Health Research.
Arizona State University is one of 32 intuitions to receive such funding through the National Institutes of Health's Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics, or RADx, program. RADx seeks to streamline moving COVID-19 testing from bench to bedside.
Marsiglia says the large collaborative effort will work to empower communities and restore trust in the process.
"We are trying to overcome all that by working with the communities themselves. They're the experts in their own culture. The idea is to provide them with the tools to do it right."
The program, which starts now and is slated to run through June 2022, will work through community health workers to provide testing along with follow-up supporting services.
"They will get access to food when they need it, help with housing – whatever referrals we will be able to make to be sure that they can do quarantine, that can take care of themselves," said Marsiglia.
Marsiglia hopes to use the same network of providers and community health workers to ensure participants also receive access to vaccines when they become available.
