The debate on open access to scientific literature that has been raging in scholarly circles for quite some time now has been fueled further by the recent developments in the realm of the open access movement. This article is a short commentary on the current scenario, challenges, and the future of the open access movement.
On April 13, 2021 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended in a pause in use of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J)-Janssen COVID-19 vaccine due to reports of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) in recently vaccinated individuals. The announcement of the pause required development of a coordinated communication strategy under extreme time pressure and careful messaging by stakeholders to mitigate reduced public confidence in COVID-19 vaccines, as was observed following the temporary suspension of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in many countries. In this survey study, we evaluated understanding and impressions of the CDC's public online information about the J&J-Janssen pause among unvaccinated US adults.
Lack of high-quality multilingual resources can contribute to disparities in the availability of medical and public health information. The COVID-19 pandemic has required rapid dissemination of essential guidance to diverse audiences and therefore provides an ideal context in which to study linguistic fairness in the U.S. Here we report a cross-sectional study of official non-English information about COVID-19 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the health departments of all 50 U.S. states. We find that multilingual information is limited in many states, such that almost half of all individuals not proficient in English or Spanish lack access to state-specific COVID-19 guidance in their primary language. Although Spanish-language information is widely available, we show using automated readability formulas that most materials do not follow standard recommendations for clear communication in medicine and public health. In combination, our results provide a snapshot of linguistic unfairness across the U.S. and highlight an urgent need for the creation of plain language, multilingual resources about COVID-19.
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