February 2022
CHAS eNews
Policy Brief
Use of a Language Intervention to Reduce Vaccine Hesitancy
According to the World Health Organization, vaccine hesitancy – the delay or outright refusal of vaccination despite its availability – is one of the top ten threats to global health. Currently, vaccine hesitancy is a major global challenge to COVID-19 immunization programs. In a new paper supported by the CHAS Seed Grant program, researchers including Boaz Keysar (William Benton Professor in the Department of Psychology at UChicago & previous Michael M. Davis Guest Lecturer) investigate how using a foreign language when communicating COVID-19 vaccine information influences vaccine acceptance. The study was conducted in Hong Kong from March 27th to April 12th, 2021, as COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy was relatively high in Hong Kong compared to other countries. Further, Chinese and English are official languages in Hong Kong, making many government and healthcare resources readily available in both languages. The study found that English increased trust in the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine and, as a result, reduced vaccine hesitancy. This research indicates that language can impact vaccine attitudes and that language interventions are a potentially low cost, actionable strategy to curtail vaccine hesitancy amongst bilingual populations. Read the complete article below.
Eliminating Explicit and Implicit Biases in Health Care: Evidence and Research Needs
Negative explicit and implicit biases against marginalized groups permeate the U.S. health care system and affect patients via patient-clinician communication, clinical decision making, and institutionalized practices. In this new publication with contributions from two CHAS fellows – Monica Peek (Professor of Medicine at UChicago) and Marshall Chin (Richard Parrillo Family Professor of Healthcare Ethics at UChicago ) – researchers underscore that addressing bias remains a fundamental professional responsibility of those accountable for the health and wellness of our populations. They explain that while current interventions, including instruction on the existence and harmful role of bias in perpetuating health disparities and skills training for managing bias, can raise awareness of provider bias and engage health care providers in establishing egalitarian goals for care delivery, these changes are not sustained and have not shown change in behavior in clinical and learning environments. The researchers suggest that the efficacy of these interventions may be hampered by health care providers' work and learning environments, which are rife with discriminatory practices. In the paper, they offer a conceptual model demonstrating that provider-level implicit bias interventions should be accompanied by interventions that systemically change structures inside and outside the healthcare system in order to succeed in influencing biases and reducing health inequities.
Upcoming Lectures
Save the dates for Spring Michael M. Davis Lectures! Register now and stay tuned for lecture details.

4/05/2022 @ 1pm CDT
TBD

4/12/2022 @ 1pm CDT
Tamara J. Cadet, PhD, LICSW, MPH
Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice

4/19/2022 @ 1pm CDT
TBD

4/26/2022 @ 1pm CDT
TBD

5/03/2022 @ 1pm CDT
Neda Laiteerapong, MD, MS
UChicago Medicine

5/10/2022 @ 1pm CDT
Matt Epperson, PhD, MSW & Samantha Guz, MSSW, LSW
UChicago Crown Family School
CHAS Podcasts
Invisible Visits: Black Middle-Class Women in the American Healthcare System

Dr. Tina Sacks, AM ’98, PhD ’13 Assistant Professor
School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley
The Importance of Community Asset Mapping, Medical Integration with Social Sciences, and Youth Involvement

Dr. Stacy Lindau, PhD
Professor, Department of Medicine, UChicago Medicine and CIO/Founder of NowPow
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Jeanne C. Marsh Named 2021 AAAS Fellow
Congratulations to our Director and George Herbert Jones Distinguished Service Professor Jeanne C. Marsh who is one of nine University of Chicago scholars named 2021 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Professor Marsh is being recognized by AAAS for her "distinguished contributions to social work research in the areas of substance abuse service delivery, services for women and children and social program and policy evaluation.”
CHAS Seed Grant Applications: Due Before April 30, 2022
CHAS Seed Grant proposals are currently being accepted online through April 30, 2022. New awards will be funded for the performance cycle of July 2022 through June 2024. Please see PI criteria at our website.

To learn more about the CHAS Seed Grant program or to submit a proposal, please visit our website.
Watch Past Davis eLectures Online
Our Autumn 2021 Davis eLecture Series is over, but you can watch lectures from this past quarter on our YouTube channel. We'll be back in Spring 2022!