Strengthening the Capacity of Service Providers to Reduce the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on African, Caribbean, and Black Communities: Protocol for the COVID-19 African, Caribbean, and Black Providers Project 2.0 Implementation and Evaluation (Preprint)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic emerged as an unprecedented challenge for health care systems across the world, disproportionately impacting immigrant and racialized populations. Canadian African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) communities represent some of the populations considered most vulnerable in terms of their susceptibility to health-related risks, receipt of adequate care, and chances of recovery. OBJECTIVE The COVID-19 ACB Providers Project 2.0 aims to strengthen the ability of health care providers to address this community’s COVID-19–related health care needs. Informed by the COVID-19 ACB Providers Project 1.0, a mixed methods study that examined the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on African, Caribbean, and Black communities in Ontario (Ottawa and Toronto), this second study seeks to develop and implement educational programs in 5 key areas (modules) to strengthen the capacity of service providers (SPs) working with African, Caribbean, and Black populations. These modules (topics) include (1) the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on health, (2) social determinants of health and health inequities, (3) critical health literacy, (4) critical racial literacy, and (5) cultural competence and safety. METHODS An implementation science approach is used to guide the development, implementation, and evaluation of the evidence-informed interventions. The intersectionality lens, socioecological model, and community-based participatory research frameworks are informing the research process. To ensure active stakeholder engagement, the project advisory committee includes 16 African, Caribbean, and Black community members, health providers, and partner agency representatives. Five modules have been developed: 2 web-based simulation games in collaboration with leading simulation experts and 3 nonsimulation modules. The analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation instructional design method was used as a framework to design and develop the educational modules. RESULTS The module development was completed in early 2024, and the training program was officially launched in April 2024 at the University of Ottawa. The synchronous format was delivered until November 2024, and the asynchronous format remained available until the end of May 2025. By January 2025, a total of 322 SPs from 33 organizations had completed training. The focus groups were held in November and December 2024 and surveys were administered between June 2024 and May 2025. Data cleaning will continue until September 2025, analysis is scheduled for September and October 2025, and findings are expected to be submitted for publication in November 2025. CONCLUSIONS This protocol outlines a scalable, community-informed intervention to build SP capacity in delivering equitable care to African, Caribbean, and Black communities. The findings will inform future health equity training and policy development across Canada and beyond. The results of this study will be disseminated in community workshops, web-based learning platforms, at academic conferences, and in peer-reviewed publications. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT DERR1-10.2196/66546
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.160 | 0.128 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.008 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.011 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.066 | 0.013 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".