COVID-19 Vaccine Listening Tours

Utilizing a $150,000 grant from the Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation, faculty and students in the College of Biosciences Doctorate of Clinical Psychology (PsyD) program are conducting “Listening Tours” – reaching out to residents in the communities we serve to learn the basis for their hesitation to be vaccinated for COVID-19.

The goal of the Listening Tours is two-fold:

• Provide a forum for public comment around the COVID vaccine in order to promote transparent communication and build community trust; and,
  
  
• Utilize the results from the open-ended questions to create meaningful, targeted educational materials on the COVID vaccine.

As a student-focused, mission driven university, KCU’s Listening Tours are taking PsyD students outside the classroom to live the mission of improving the well-being of the communities we serve.

The Listening Tour concept is based on findings from social, behavioral, and communication sciences on how to increase public understanding of, access to, and acceptance of the COVID vaccine. Evidence from these sciences indicates that a more effective approach to increasing vaccine uptake is to engage in listening rather than telling; having a conversation with patients about their concerns regarding the vaccine rather than telling them benefits and expecting compliance.

The program has evolved to include a program coordinator as well as several graduate students.  This allows PsyD students to reach more rural and underserved populations, reaching beyond the urban Kansas City area to more rural populations.

Participating Partners

These local health care organizations partner with KCU on our important Listening Tours efforts.

• Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC)
• Compass Health Network
• Vaccinate KC