Demographic Predictors of COVID-19 Personal Risk Perceptions Across the U.S, U.K, and Canada 1
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Tanzim Bhuiya , Richard J Klares III , Madellena Conte
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and Joseph Cervia, M.D
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Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell
Background
Results
● On March 11th, 2020 COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) ● Government interventions in a pandemic play a crucial role in controlling the spread of disease. ● The Health Belief Model states maximal health behavior change will occur if initiatives successfully target perceived barriers, benefits, self efficacy and threats ● Currently, there is a disconnect between policy and public actions, as seen by lack of adherence. ● This can, in part, be attributed to the public’s personal risk perceptions to COVID-19 ● Thus, we report on the roles education and income have on these outcome variables among residents in the US, Canada, and UK.
Objective ● To explore the roles education, income, and country have on personal risk perceptions about COVID-19
Methods ● The data set used in this study was supplied by Pennycook et, al. ● Data was extracted from three pre-registered surveys conducted by the polling firm Prolific ● Binary logistic regressions were conducted in order to investigate the roles country of residence, education and household income had on the outcome variables
Discussion ● The lowest income quartile experienced 2.61x personal risk compared to highest income quartile bracket ● Lower income communities suffer from more pre-existing health conditions and were most mobile Figure 7: Independent CRISPR knockout of CDK4 or CDK6 does not cause dropout in most breast cancer cell lines during COVID-19 studied. ● US Citizens experienced 2.48x personal risk compared to Canadian counterparts ● This can potentially be due to the cost of healthcare and health insurance, which is tied to employment
Conclusion ● Our analysis suggests that individuals in the lowest income bracket, especially in the United States, feel that they are at more personal risk from COVID-19 ● This highlights the socioeconomic disparities COVID-19 has had globally
Resources Duan, T., Jiang, H., Deng, X., Zhang, Q., & Wang, F. (2020). Government intervention, risk perception, and the adoption of protective action recommendations: Evidence from the COVID-19 prevention and control experience of China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(10), 3387. Jones, C. L., Jensen, J. D., Scherr, C. L., Brown, N. R., Christy, K., & Weaver, J. (2015). The health belief model as an explanatory framework in communication research: exploring parallel, serial, and moderated mediation. Health communication, 30(6), 566-576. Weill, J. A., Stigler, M., Deschenes, O., & Springborn, M. R. (2020). Social distancing responses to COVID-19 emergency declarations strongly differentiated by income. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(33), 19658-19660.