Back

An Assessment of Correctional Officer's Health Beliefs in Relationship to COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake and Hesitancy.

Hedden-Clayton, B.; Roddy, A. L.; Roddy, J. K.; Ngassa, Y.; Pickard, B.; Tam, R. A.; Wurcel, A. G.

2026-03-26 public and global health
10.64898/2026.03.24.26349101 medRxiv
Show abstract

IntroductionDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, incarcerated populations faced heightened risk of exposure due to healthcare barriers, restrictive environments, and pre-existing health conditions. Consequently, Correctional Officers (COs) faced increased risk of COVID-19 exposure. Given the health benefits of COVID-19 vaccination and the rise in vaccine hesitancy, this study examined the relationship between COs health beliefs and COVID-19 vaccine uptake. MethodsA health beliefs survey was administered to Massachusetts-based COs (n=118). Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection modeling and logistic regression was utilized to analyze the survey data. ResultsCOs with higher trust in vaccines and a prior positive COVID-19 test were most likely to get vaccinated voluntarily. Those with low trust in vaccines and no previous positive COVID-19 test were least likely to receive the vaccine. ConclusionDespite the severe impact of COVID-19 in correctional settings, and the evidence of vaccine efficacy against hospitalization and death, vaccine uptake among COs remains low.

Published in Sage Open Medicine · not in our set (fewer than 10 published preprints to learn from) · training set

Matching journals

The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.