School of Medicine Publications and Presentations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-9-2022
Abstract
Hispanic communities have been disproportionately affected by economic disparities. These inequalities have put Hispanics at an increased risk for preventable health conditions. In addition, the CDC reports Hispanics to have 1.5× COVID-19 infection rates and low vaccination rates. This study aims to identify the driving factors for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy of Hispanic survey participants in the Rio Grande Valley. Our analysis used machine learning methods to identify significant associations between medical, economic, and social factors impacting the uptake and willingness to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. A combination of three classification methods (i.e., logistic regression, decision trees, and support vector machines) was used to classify observations based on the value of the targeted responses received and extract a robust subset of factors. Our analysis revealed different medical, economic, and social associations that correlate to other target population groups (i.e., males and females). According to the analysis performed on males, the Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) value was 0.972. An MCC score of 0.805 was achieved by analyzing females, while the analysis of males and females achieved 0.797. Specifically, several medical, economic factors, and sociodemographic characteristics are more prevalent in vaccine-hesitant groups, such as asthma, hypertension, mental health problems, financial strain due to COVID-19, gender, lack of health insurance plans, and limited test availability.
Recommended Citation
Bikaki, A.; Machiorlatti, M.; Clark, L.C.; Robledo, C.A.; Kakadiaris, I.A. Factors Contributing to SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Hesitancy of Hispanic Population in Rio Grande Valley. Vaccines 2022, 10, 1282. https://doi.org/10.3390/ vaccines10081282
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Vaccines
DOI
10.3390/ vaccines10081282
Academic Level
faculty
Mentor/PI Department
Population Health and Biostatistics
Comments
© 2022 by the authors.