Edom Gelaw, M.S. Candidate

Department of Biostatics and Epidemiology

Trust in Southern Nevada Health District by the Southern Nevada Populaton During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Committee Members:

• Dr. Brian Labus, Advisory Committee Chair
• Dr. Chad Cross, Advisory Committee Member
• Dr. Ann Vuong, Advisory Committee Member
• Dr. Fatma Nasoz, Graduate College Representative

Abstract

The Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) is the governmental public health authority for Southern Nevada, which has been serving the population since 1962. Services offered during the pandemic include (but are not limited to); contact tracing, testing, vaccination, quarantine/isolation shelters, COVID-19 hotline, and the distribution of at-home testing kits. As focus shifted on the community's trust towards local health districts, their services remains an important component of public health for collaborative work. SNHD saw the need for evaluating trust by its population based on the services provided during the COVID-19 pandemic and performed an assessment of COVID-19 pandemic response from May 16, 2022 through August 12, 2022 through door to door surveys. The current project is an expansion of this assessment with an objective to investigate trust in SNHD by Southern Nevada residents during the COVID-19 pandemic by looking at its association with various variables including gender, educational attainment, access to vaccination/testing resources, satisfaction by services, and more. Chi square tests were performed to measure the associations between the variables and found that gender (X2(1, 124) = 9.10, p = .003), benefit from services during COVID-19 pandemic (X2(1, 102) = 51.45, p = .001), and satisfaction by services during COVID-19 pandemic (X2(1, 118) = 81.71, p = 0.001) had statistically significant associations with trust. The binary logistic regression analysis with these three variables and trust did not provide a useful analysis due to the small sample size. While various studies worldwide investigated trust in relation to health care, government, and compliance with public health guidelines, literature remains scarce in relation to SNHD,  its population, and COVID-19 services. This study helps fill this gap and serves as a foundation for future research and a guide for service evaluations and improvements at SNHD.