SCALE-UP Utah II: Community-Academic Partnership to Address COVID-19 Conversational Agent Study

The long-term objective of SCALE-UP II is to increase the reach, uptake, and sustainability of COVID-19 testing among underserved populations. Through RADx-UP Phase I funding (SCALE-UP Utah), the team has established population health management (PHM) interventions that have been used since Feb 2021 to increase the uptake of COVID-19 testing and vaccination among community health center patients. Interventions are based on a PHM approach that uses widely available technology (i.e. cell phones and text messaging). SCALE-UP II will both build on SCALE-UP Utah PHM interventions and investigate novel resource conservation approaches (i.e., Request-Patient Navigation vs. No Patient Navigation and text messaging vs. conversational agent). SCALE-UP II builds on long standing partnerships among the University of Utah Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UofU CTSI), Association for Utah Community Health (AUCH), CHCs, and the Utah Department of Health(UDOH). CTSI and SCALE-UP II investigators are leading several COVID-19 initiatives that drive public health response and state government policies in Utah. Thus, the UofU team is uniquely positioned to lead this project.