Vol. 2, No. 3
Action Items:
  • Ensure your community partners have the link to the Feb. 17 project-wide meeting.
  • Complete the semi-annual Project Feedback Survey.
  • Mark your calendar: the next RADx-UP Scientific meeting is May 3 at 1 p.m. - 4.pm. ET

Dear RADx-UP Partners,

February is Black History Month – it is a time for us to celebrate and honor the contributions that African Americans have made to our history, culture, and science. It’s also a time to look toward the future to recognize the important influence that Black/ African Americans continue to have, including in the RADx-UP efforts to find and highlight effective strategies to eliminate health disparities. Thank you for your continued work in promoting equity for Black and African Americans.
Please join us for this month’s Project-wide Meeting on Thurs., Feb. 17, 2 p.m.-3 p.m. ET. The meeting will feature three experts from the Engaging Black/African Americans working group. They will explore best practices for diversity in messaging and discuss their COVID-19 work in the communities they serve. Please ask questions during the meeting or in advance.
Your Experience is Important
The CDCC team uses your feedback to identify where/how to refine and improve CDCC infrastructure, CDCC support service implementation, and core-specific functions. Please help us by completing the semi-annual Project Feedback Survey. Please ask at least three people (one PI, one operational staff member, and one community partner) from your project to take the survey.
RADx-UP Phase III is likely
NIH posted a notice of intent to publish for a funding opportunity for the RADx-UP Initiative (Phase III) (link). “Phase III of RADx-UP will encourage novel ideas that have not been examined adequately in the first two phases and are responsive to the dynamics of the pandemic. Specifically, applicants will be encouraged to explore novel interventions to increase access to and uptake of rapid SARS-CoV-2 testing (e.g., rapid antigen testing) in an environment of widespread vaccine availability; the social, ethical, and behavioral implications associated with testing; and specific strategies for scalable and sustainable testing programs to enable safe in-person school instruction.” Watch this page for the RFAs.
myRADx-UPhome adds new functions
Attention RADx-UP project data managers: We released an update (v13.0) to the data portal and shared workspace myRADx-UPhome with the following new functions and features:

  • Identifiable data will now be removed from your data set upon uploading, depending on the status of your project’s Data Transfer Agreement
  • A new Data Quality Resolution function allows data managers to view conformance and expected/received issues shown in the Data Quality Report and gives you the ability to address any such issues.
  • A new page within the embedded Data Quality Report reports on failures in branching logic as described in the NIH RADx-UP CDEs REDCap Codebook.
Call for Presentations: RADx-UP Scientific Meeting
The RADx-UP Scientific Meeting Series is a regular showcase for RADx-UP projects to present data results and share insights. It’s a stage for you to describe solutions for combatting COVID-19, promoting testing, and addressing current/future variants of the SARS-CoV2 virus. The next Scientific Meeting will be May 3 from 1 p.m. to 4.pm. ET. Take this opportunity to present your project’s results — tell us about what you can share with the consortium in your 15-minute presentation here.
Research Roundup: Important Lessons about COVID-19 in Latinx communities
On RADx-UP.org, we’ve begun to highlight the research from RADx-UP projects as found in the Publications dashboard. Our first research roundup covers three research articles from RADx-UP researchers and community members across the US who are investigating the social determinates of health that leave Latinx communities particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. Read more.
Research Briefs
The RADx-UP Engagement Resource Center worked with the team out of John Hopkins University to create a one-page, shareable research brief based on their journal article “Community Testing and SARS-CoV-2 Rates for Latinxs in Baltimore” in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
  • This RADx-UP Research Brief highlights key findings in the study that involved religious leaders and community health workers to ease doubts about and increase access to COVID-19 tests in Latinx communities. View and share the brief in English or Spanish.
  • This is the first of many research briefs to be produced by the CDCC about RADx-UP publications. Projects with publications will be contacted by their EIT to support this CDCC initiative.
6 conspiracy theory items comprising the COVID-19 Disinformation Scale
The RADx-UP project at the University of California San Diego found that nearly one-third of people injecting drugs in the U.S.–Mexico border region were COVID-19 vaccine hesitant. The project team’s recent research article describes the following COVID-19 Disinformation Scale to measure participants’ belief in COVID-19 conspiracies and how the beliefs connect to vaccine and testing hesitancy:
  1. Thinks that the pharmaceutical industry created the COVID-19 virus
  2. Thinks that the coronavirus was created by the Chinese government as a biological weapon
  3. Thinks that vaccines given to children for diseases like measles and mumps cause autism
  4. Thinks that COVID vaccines being offered to people like me are not as safe as other COVID vaccines
  5. Thinks that COVID vaccines include a tracking device
  6. Thinks that some COVID vaccines could change their DNA

Response options include “true,” “unsure,” and “false.”

Explore more scholarship generated by RADx-UP project teams, including both academic papers and reports, on the Publications page of RADx-UP.org.
Insights on contact tracing
Lorna Thorpe, from the RADx-UP project at New York University, spoke at the January Project-wide Meeting about how that project is helping youth tell their stories about COVID-19 and the vaccines. The next week, we heard Lorne interviewed on NPR about the benefits and disadvantages of contact tracing at this pandemic phase. Listen here.
NYT Looks at “The Two Covid Americas”
The New York Times took a look at “The Two Covid Americas.” Through a poll conducted by Morning Consult, a survey firm, the paper found striking differences in how Americans perceive COVID-19 risks and how they behave. “The poll results suggest that Americans have adopted at least some irrational beliefs about Covid. In our highly polarized country, many people seem to be allowing partisanship to influence their beliefs and sometimes to overwhelm scientific evidence,” the author writes. Read the complete poll or listen to a podcast about the survey.
In search of awe
Not from a RADx-UP project, but this photo series about haematopoiesis is a beautiful cross between art and medicine based on the artist's personal health experiences.

A recent story from NC Health News highlights the role of art in mental health therapy and how people have used art as a way to express themselves and work through life’s experiences and emotions.
Please contact us at RADx-UP-CDCC@duke.edu or through your assigned CDCC EIT (see current list under Engagement Impact Teams).

Use this form to alert the CDCC to resources like the item above or other information coming out of your project or community.