# Communities Fighting COVID!

> **NIH NIH U54** · SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $3,876,170

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
The novel SARS-CoV-2 continues to spread in the United States, with almost 5 million confirmed cases of and
over 150,000 deaths. Given observed disparities in morbidity, hospitalization, and mortality across race, ethnicity,
and socioeconomic status, there is a great need to increase testing access and uptake with rapid return of test
results. We propose a community health worker (CHW)-led approach to facilitate COVID-19 testing for
underserved populations, with a focus on increasing testing access, uptake, and impact among Latinx, African
American, Filipino, and immigrant communities using different testing implementation strategies. Our project will
utilize existing COVID-19 contact tracing and community partner infrastructure to reach individuals aged 12 and
above exposed or at high-risk of COVID-19 exposure who may be less able to test. We will use a cluster
randomized crossover trial to test mobile and home-based testing strategies for increasing testing uptake among
contacts, referred high-risk friends and family, and the broader community. Our specific aims are to: 1) Implement
COVID-19 testing integrated into community health worker contact tracing home visits and compare the
subsequent uptake of testing for referred high-risk friends and family in a mobile testing vs. home-based testing
approach; 2) Using a community-led rapid cycle research process, identify effective strategies to promote uptake
of COVID-19 testing through mobile/pop-up testing for Latinx, African American, Filipino, and immigrant
populations exposed or at high risk of exposure to COVID-19 who are not accessing testing; 3) Gather CHW
and community insights to establish best practices for future scale-up and sustainability. We expect to test over
40,000 individuals through these efforts. The project will contribute to health disparity reductions in COVID-19
morbidity and mortality and produce high impact through the our core strengths in drawing on local knowledge,
the team’s existing community partnerships, use of culturally-competent community healthcare workers, point-
of-care rapid and inexpensive testing, and the use of real-time geospatial data from our contact tracing program
to prioritize locations for mobile pop-up testing. Our focus on underserved populations with high COVID-19
exposures without prior testing access will inform both future testing and vaccination efforts.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10233715
- **Project number:** 3U54CA132384-10S1
- **Recipient organization:** SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Richard Matthew Cripps
- **Activity code:** U54 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $3,876,170
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2007-12-01 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10233715

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10233715, Communities Fighting COVID! (3U54CA132384-10S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10233715. Licensed CC0.

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