Lung-Chang Chien, Edom Gelaw (Epidemiology and Biostatistics), Lung-Wen Antony Chen (Environmental and Global Health), and colleagues published an article titled, “Tracking COVID-19 vaccination barriers over time: a census-tract-level barrier index approach,” in the journal Epidemiology and Infection.

This study developed a dynamic, census-tract-level COVID-19 Vaccination Barrier Index (CVBI) for Clark County, Nevada, to examine how vaccination barriers evolved over time and how they were associated with partial, full, and booster COVID-19 vaccination rates between December 2020 and June 2022. Using advanced statistical methods, including lagged weighted quantile sum regression and spatial Bayesian modeling, the researchers identified persistent and shifting barriers to vaccination across communities.

Edom Gelaw is a Ph.D. student in the School of Public Health.