Pacific Islanders: Earn incentives for participating in a COVID-related study
Pacific Islander volunteers are being sought to take part in a University of Guam–led study seeking to learn more about Pacific Islanders’ knowledge and understanding of COVID-19 and COVID-19 testing. Pacific Islanders — defined as the indigenous people of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Tonga, Hawai’i, and Palau — collectively have among the highest morbidity and mortality rates associated with COVID-19 in the United States.
Up to $35 in incentives is available for completing two questionnaires and referring up to a maximum of three other interested and willing Pacific Islanders.
The study, titled UOG RADx-UP: Protecting Life Project (Puipuia le Ola/Prutehi I Lina’la) is one of 69 projects across the United States funded by the National Institutes of Health. RADx-UP stands for the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (in) Underserved Populations. This project is a partnership between the University of Guam and the University of Hawai`i John A. Burns School of Medicine, and both sites are actively seeking to recruit up to 800 participants in Guam and 4,000 participants in Hawaii.
Participants will be asked to complete two confidential questionnaires and to provide a specimen for COVID-19 testing. In addition, educational sessions will be offered about COVID-19 in the Pacific Islander communities along with information about COVID-19 prevention and testing.
To determine eligibility, interested participants may visit https://url.uog.edu/radxup.
For more information, please contact a UOG RADx-UP research associate from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays at (671) 735-0215 or via email at radxup@triton.uog.edu. The project is also on Facebook as “UOG RADx-UP Protecting Life Project.”
This study has been approved by the UOG Institutional Review Board's Committee on Human Subjects Research (CHRS#: 21-15).