Covid Apps for young adults for preventing transmission and promoting vaccination among refugees

• Applicants: Dr. Hannah Comteße; Professor Dr. Ulrich Frick; Professor Dr. Rüdiger Pryss; Professorin Dr. Rita Rosner
• Subject Area: Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
• Term: from 2021 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 466286829

Collective housing institutions for asylum seekers have frequently been hotspots for COVID-19 outbreaks during the current pandemic, particularly due to narrow living conditions, misinformation of residents, and cultural barriers to preventive behavioral patterns. Adolescents and young adults additionally are at high risk for disease transmission following their contact patterns and increased chances for asymptomatic course of disease. The proposed study aims at clarifying widespread misconceptions about COVID-19, providing relevant information in a youth-specific mode, and using adequate channels by constructing serious games for learning objectives in a randomized, two arms, open preventive trial. The target population are asylum seekers in institutionalized living settings, aged 16 to 26 years. All participants will receive (nearly) unlimited Web access for their smartphones as incentive for their participation, if they work through a series of culturally and developmentally adapted serious games providing informative content. Disease knowledge and behavioral intentions will be measured as study endpoints. A randomized half of the participants additionally receives consultancy on individual planning steps to perform preventive behavior during the pandemic and on measures to maintain self- protective and preventive behavior under the given institutional and/or social context. This intervention concept is inspired by the state of the art “Health Action Process Approach” in health promotion. The individual support will be provided in group sessions by trained psychologists. Willingness to be vaccinated constitutes an additional study endpoint. Two groups of 50 participants will display sufficient statistical power to detect medium effect sizes for this additional component. The project team brings together expertise from clinical psychology, public health, and informatics. Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt has performed several clinical trials with refugees as well as adolescents dedicated to treatment of various psychiatric disorders highly prevalent among asylum seekers. HSD University of Applied Sciences as part of an ongoing research network is engaged in the construction of developmentally adapted serious games to promote digital competence of adolescents. Julius-Maximilian University (medical informatics) has developed the Corona Health app in collaboration with the Robert Koch Institute. This platform can be used to integrate the series of micro games that will be the digital core of the preventive strategy in this project. By comparing a new way to foster disease knowledge (smartphone apps & gamification) alone or in combination with individualized feedback and intensified planning of preventive behavior, this study will contribute to a better understanding of preventive strategies beyond the specific target population chosen here.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants