An official website of the United States government
Abstract Field courses can provide formative experiences that also reduce disparities in STEM education. Impacts of the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic on‐field programs have been particularly severe, as many institutions shifted to online instruction. Some courses retained in‐person field experiences during the pandemic, and achieved high student learning outcomes. Here, I describe an approach to mitigating risk of COVID‐19 and other hazards during expedition‐based field courses, and student learning outcomes achieved using that approach. I applied comprehensive risk management to in‐person field expeditions that treated COVID‐19 as a hazard, requiring mitigation to maintain an acceptable low level of risk. Prior to broad availability of COVID‐19 vaccines, we applied a coronavirus‐free “bubble” strategy in which all participants passed a COVID‐19 PCR test immediately before departure and then avoided contact with people outside our bubble. In the future, vaccination can reduce risk further. We implemented additional safety factors to reduce risk of incidents that could require evacuation into medical facilities overloaded with COVID‐19 patients. The courses were successful: we had no infections or other serious incidents and student learning outcomes were transformative. The approach provides a model for conducting immersive field courses during the pandemic and beyond. Several field course networks are implementing similar approaches to restore valuable field education opportunities that have declined during the pandemic.
more »
« less
Do coronavirus vaccine challenge trials have a distinctive generalisability problem?
Notwithstanding the success of conventional field trials for vaccines against COVID-19, human challenge trials (HCTs) that could obtain more information about these and about other vaccines and further strategies against it are about to start in the UK. One critique of COVID-19 HCTs is their distinct paucity of information on crucial population groups. For safety reasons, these HCTs will exclude candidate participants of advanced age or with comorbidities that worsen COVID-19, yet a vaccine should (perhaps especially) protect such populations. We turn this cliché on its head. The truth is that either an HCT or a field trial has intrinsic generalisability limitations, that an HCT can expedite protection of high-risk participants even without challenging them with the virus, and that an important route to obtaining results generalisable to high-risk groups under either strategy is facilitated by HCTs.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2039320
- PAR ID:
- 10302356
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Medical Ethics
- ISSN:
- 0306-6800
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- medethics-2020-107109
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Background. Vaccine misinformation has been widely spread on social media, but attempts to combat it have not taken advantage of the attributes of social media platforms for health education. Methods. The objective was to test the efficacy of moderated social media discussions about COVID-19 vaccines in private Facebook groups. Unvaccinated U.S. adults were recruited using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and randomized. In the intervention group, moderators posted two informational posts per day for 4 weeks and engaged in relationship-building interactions with group members. In the control group, participants received a referral to Facebook’s COVID-19 Information Center. Follow-up surveys with participants (N = 478) were conducted 6 weeks post-enrollment. Results. At 6 weeks follow-up, no differences were found in vaccination rates. Intervention participants were more likely to show improvements in their COVID-19 vaccination intentions (vs. stay same or decline) compared with control (p = .03). They also improved more in their intentions to encourage others to vaccinate for COVID-19. There were no differences in COVID-19 vaccine confidence or intentions between groups. General vaccine and responsibility to vaccinate were higher in the intervention compared with control. Most participants in the intervention group reported high levels of satisfaction. Participants engaged with content (e.g., commented, reacted) 11.8 times on average over the course of 4 weeks. Conclusions. Engaging with vaccine-hesitant individuals in private Facebook groups improved some COVID-19 vaccine-related beliefs and represents a promising strategy.more » « less
-
In spring, summer and autumn 2020, one abiding argument against controlled human infection (CHI) studies of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines has been their impact on local communities. Leading scientists and bioethicists expressed concern about undue usage of local residents’ direly needed scarce resources at a time of great need and even about their unintended infection. They recommended either avoiding CHI trials or engaging local communities before conducting any CHIs. Similar recommendations were not made for the alternative—standard phase III field trials of these same vaccines. We argue that the health effects of CHI studies on local residents not participating in the study tend to be smaller and more positive than those of field trials. That is all the more so now that tested vaccines are being rolled out. Whether or not local community engagement is necessary for urgent vaccine studies in the pandemic, the case for its engagement is stronger prior to field trials than prior to CHI studies.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Several COVID-19 vaccines have been on the market since early 2021 and may vary in their effectiveness and safety. This study characterizes hesitancy about accepting COVID-19 vaccines among parents in Shanghai, China, and identifies how sensitive they are to changes in vaccine safety and effectiveness profiles. Schools in each township of Minhang District, Shanghai, were sampled, and parents in the WeChat group of each school were asked to participate in this cross-sectional Internet-based survey. Parents responded to questions about hesitancy and were given information about five different COVID-19 vaccine candidates, the effectiveness of which varied between 50 and 95% and which had a risk of fever as a side effect between 5 and 20%. Overall, 3673 parents responded to the survey. Almost 90% would accept a vaccine for themselves (89.7%), for their child (87.5%) or for an elderly parent (88.5%) with the most ideal attributes (95% effectiveness with 5% risk of fever). But with the least ideal attributes (50% effectiveness and a 20% risk of fever) these numbers dropped to 33.5%, 31.3%, and 31.8%, respectively. Vaccine hesitancy, age at first child’s birth, and relative income were all significantly related to sensitivity to vaccine safety and effectiveness. Parents showed a substantial shift in attitudes towards a vaccine based on its safety and effectiveness profile. These findings indicate that COVID-19 vaccine acceptance may be heavily influenced by how effective the vaccine actually is and could be impeded or enhanced based on vaccines already on the market.more » « less
-
Despite their clearly demonstrated safety and effectiveness, approved vaccines against COVID-19 are commonly mistrusted. Nations should find and implement effective ways to boost vaccine confidence. But the implications for ethical vaccine development are less straightforward than some have assumed. Opponents of COVID-19 vaccine challenge trials, in particular, made speculative or empirically implausible warnings on this matter, some of which, if applied consistently, would have ruled out most COVID-19 vaccine trials and many non-pharmaceutical responses.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2020-107109
