https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3246-5879
Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionFebruary 8, 2021 |
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PONE-D-21-04327 COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance and Beliefs among Black and Hispanic Americans PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Kricorian, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ACADEMIC EDITOR:
Please submit your revised manuscript by May 09 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
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Goldfarb, DrPH Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Please include additional information regarding the survey or questionnaire used in the study and ensure that you have provided sufficient details that others could replicate the analyses. For instance, if you developed a questionnaire as part of this study and it is not under a copyright more restrictive than CC-BY, please include a copy, in both the original language and English, as Supporting Information. Moreover, please include more details on how the questionnaire was pre-tested, and whether it was validated. 3. In your Methods section, please provide additional information about the participant recruitment method and the demographic details of your participants. 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. Additional Editor Comments (if provided): Thank you for your submission. Please see the reviewer's comments and provide a comprehensive response to each item. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ********** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ********** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ********** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The manuscript is fairly well written however, there is no information about participants other than age, race, gender and ethnicity. There are a number of factors that could influence attitudes about the COVID-19 vaccine uptake but were not included in this study. The location of the participants in the US was not included in the manuscript and can also have profound effects on attitudes about the vaccine. Details of the vaccine and variants should be mentioned along hesitancy observed among health care workers. African Americans and Hispanic-Latin-x communities are culturally distinct and will require a culturally competent approach to vaccine hesitancy which should be mention as a part increasing vaccine acceptance in minority communities. It is my opinion that the manuscript should be considered for publication after my comments are addressed. ********** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.
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| Revision 1 |
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PONE-D-21-04327R1 COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance and Beliefs among Black and Hispanic Americans PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Kricorian, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process Please submit your revised manuscript within 60 days of receipt of this email. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Marlene Camacho-Rivera, ScD, MPH Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: (No Response) ********** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Partly ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: June 12, 2021 Editor and Chief PLOS ONE Manuscript ID: PONE-D-21-04327 Dear Editor, My comments regarding manuscript PONE-D-21-04327R1 entitled “COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance and Beliefs among Black and Hispanic Americans” are enclosed. Thank you for giving me another opportunity to review this revised manuscript submitted to your journal for publication. Kind regards, Donald J. Alcendor, Ph.D. Associate Professor Meharry Medical College Center for AIDS Health Disparities Research & Department of Microbiology and Immunology & Obstetrics and Gynecology Hubbard Hospital 5th Floor Rm. 5025 1005 Dr. D.B. Todd Jr. Blvd. Nashville, TN 37208 Phone: 615-327-6449 Fax: 615-327-6929 Email: dalcendor@mmc.edu Associate Professor Adjunct Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology Vanderbilt University Medical Center REVIEW Dear Author, The manuscript examines COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and beliefs among Black and Hispanic Americans. The paper is part of a broad, representative survey of US adults (N=1950) in order to better understand vaccine beliefs and explore opportunities to increase vaccine acceptance among these groups. The survey results suggested that Black and Hispanic individuals were less willing than Whites to receive the COVID-19 vaccine immediately. Overall: The manuscript is fairly well written and my comments have been adequately addressed in the revised manuscript. It is my opinion that the manuscript should now be considered for publication. Main Comments: 1. Because the COVID-19 pandemic is changing daily, the authors should make a statement in the introduction that notes “at the time of this writing…….” “At the time of this writing, approximately fifty thousand Black Americans and seventy thousand Hispanic Americans have died from the virus.” A reference for this statement would have been nice. This comment has been addressed in the revised manuscript. 2. The available COVID-19 vaccines that have undergone Emergency Use Authorization should be included in the introduction because this information is changing daily and the updated information should be reflected in the manuscript. At the time of the survey performed for this study there were only 2 EUA approved vaccines, now there are 3, the J&J vaccine was approved February 27, 2021. This comment has been addressed in the revised manuscript. 3. The term “achieve broad-scale immunity” should be replaced by “herd immunity” which is define at this time to be between (75%-85%) of the US population. This comment has been addressed in the revised manuscript. 4. The authors should mention the long-standing safety of vaccines given to children and adolescents to attend public school and the extremely low rate of adverse events in this population that represent 24% of the US population. Even more, we have to vaccinate enough of the global population to end this pandemic and we have to curtail the evolution of viral variants that could lead to this virus becoming endemic across the world not just in the US. This comment has been addressed in the revised manuscript. 5. There is also not one sentence about viral variants and their contribution to the pandemic. This comment has been addressed in the revised manuscript. 6. Vaccine hesitancy among healthcare providers should be mentioned in the manuscript. This comment has been addressed in the revised manuscript. 7. There is no information about participants other than age, race, gender, and ethnicity. There is no information on their socioeconomic status, if they have access to the internet, low vs high income, education level, political affiliation, and do they have insurance etc. There many factors that influence attitudes about this vaccine. This comment has been addressed in the revised manuscript. 8. The other category in Table 1 should be briefly defined. This comment has been addressed in the revised manuscript. 9. Relating these findings to participant education, income levels, political affiliation etc could have profound effects on the data. This comment has been addressed in the revised manuscript. 10. The participants location in the US (rural vs suburban, South vs West) could also be mentioned and would likely have a profound effect on the results of this study. This comment has been addressed in the revised manuscript. 11. African Americans and Hispanic-Latin-x communities are culturally distinct and will require a culturally competent approach which should be mention as a part increasing vaccine acceptance and reducing vaccine hesitancy in minority communities. This comment has been addressed in the revised manuscript. Reviewer #2: This revised manuscript seeks to establish the prevalence of racial and/or ethnic differences in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Unfortunately, I am being asked to review the resubmission without having been a reviewer of the initial submission. To that end I have a few concerns about the papr that were not previously raised, while with one exception (noted below) the authors seemed responsive to the previous reviewers’ comments. Primary Concerns that should be addressed: My main concern is that H4 essentially arises from nowhere, with the background of the paper focusing exclusively on why we would expect racial/ethnic differences, and provides essentially no motivation for this hypothesis, or even why this particular question is an additional focus of the paper. There is ample existing research to draw on to provide support for this hypothesis, but as written this is missing from the current manuscript. In the text, the authors suggest that care was taken to compare the sample to US composition, and re-weight to adjust for that representation, but no details are provided for those comparisons (e.g., in Table 1) or weighting approaches. Lesser Concerns for the authors to consider: A previous reviewer asked how the observed associations are patterned by indicators of SES. The authors claim that such multivariate analyses are not feasible with these data. While the structure may not allow for formal mediation analyses, they seem more than sufficient to include one (or more) of these as controls in a multivariate model. That is, the paragraph on p. 19 is an unconvincing response to this previous reviewer request. I’m not convinced this paper needs that additional layer; but it’s not infeasible as the authors suggest. The phrase “end the pandemic” (p. 1) is not especially meaningful. The likely outcome is not that SARS-COV-2 will fade away, but that it will become endemic in ways that are manageable at a population level. In other words, this common phrase often brings to mind an unlikely eventuality, and isn’t very helpful here. The range of estimates are wide for herd immunity. It’s unclear why the authors draw only on high-end estimates, suggesting the need for near universal vaccine coverage. If anything, this focus is likely to undermine the seeming aim of the paper to increase vaccine uptake. The responses to the timing question (Table 3) could be substantially affected by perceived timing of availability / access to the vaccine. In other words I worry that responses here could essentially be double barreled in that they may capture both how long someone perceives it will be before the vaccines is available to them, and how long they would wait after that point, while it’s only being interpreted to represent the latter. Is there any reason to not be concerned about this? If not, a caveat should probably be made about its interpretation. The text on p. 12 and the table on p. 13 don’t match. The text suggests the comparisons being made include those reporting both extremely and very important, while it’s clear they only include the “extremely” row from the table. Admittedly pedantic writing details: - “Data” are plural. So “CDC data also indicate” (not “indicates”) on p. 2. - Methodology is the study of methods. A study’s design and analytic strategies are its “Methods” (p. 4). - “…respondents were less likely to be…” (not “like) on p. 6. ********** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes: Donald J. Alcendor Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.
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| Revision 2 |
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COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance and Beliefs among Black and Hispanic Americans PONE-D-21-04327R2 Dear Dr. Kricorian, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Marlene Camacho-Rivera, ScD, MPH Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ********** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #2: (No Response) ********** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #2: No |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-21-04327R2 COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance and Beliefs among Black and Hispanic Americans Dear Dr. Kricorian: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Marlene Camacho-Rivera Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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