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Salience of Trust in Discussions and Recommendations of the United States’ COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force

Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: OBJECTIVE: The COVID-19 pandemic has further eroded trust in public health institutions across the United States. We examined the salience of trust in the federal government's discussions and recommendations of the US COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force (HETF). METHODS: We conducted a thematic analysis of publicly available HETF documents, including the executive order, 8 meeting minutes, and 2 final deliverables. Given that trust operates at multiple levels of the socioecological continuum, we used an interpretive analytic approach to our inquiry. RESULTS: We found that several barriers, facilitators, and influencers to trust were discussed during HETF meetings but few were mentioned consistently across all documents. Trust was most frequently mentioned by individuals in the public comments section of HETF meetings, more so than HETF members or representatives of federal agencies. Public commenters comprised 52% of total mentions of trust. However, these mentions did not make their way into the final HETF deliverables, signaling a potential disconnect between insights from public commenters and HETF representatives. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that trust had limited prominence in HETF discussions and recommendations. To rebuild the public's trust, it is imperative that the federal government, in collaboration with state and local partners, further develop actionable mechanisms to foster trust as a pillar of public health practice. By ensuring ethical principles are applied in decision-making and implementation, gaps in (mis)trust may be bridged, ultimately boosting the efficacy of public health emergency response.
DOI: 10.1177/00333549241307499
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4405913901
FWCI: 1.062
Cites: 26
Cited by: 2
Related to: 10