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Abstract
Objective To explore the psychological, social and financial outcomes of COVID-19—and the sociodemographic predictors of those outcomes—among culturally and linguistically diverse communities in Sydney, Australia.
Design Cross-sectional survey informed by the Framework for Culturally Competent Health Research conducted between March and July 2021.
Setting Participants who primarily speak a language other than English at home were recruited from Greater Western Sydney, New South Wales.
Participants 708 community members (mean age: 45.4 years (range 18–91)). 88% (n=622) were born outside of Australia, 31% (n=220) did not speak English well or at all, and 41% (n=290) had inadequate health literacy.
Outcome measures Thirteen items regarding COVID-19-related psychological, social and financial outcomes were adapted from validated scales, previous surveys or co-designed in partnership with Multicultural Health and interpreter service staff. Logistic regression models (using poststratification weighted frequencies) were used to identify sociodemographic predictors of outcomes. Surveys were available in English or translated (11 languages).
Results In this analysis, conducted prior to the 2021 COVID-19 outbreak in Sydney, 25% of the sample reported feeling nervous or stressed most/all of the time and 22% felt lonely or alone most/all of the time. A quarter of participants reported negative impacts on their spousal relationships as a result of COVID-19 and most parents reported that their children were less active (64%), had more screen time (63%) and were finding school harder (45%). Mean financial burden was 2.9/5 (95% CI 2.8 to 2.9). Regression analyses consistently showed more negative outcomes for those with comorbidities and differences across language groups.
Conclusion Culturally and linguistically diverse communities experience significant psychological, social and financial impacts of COVID-19. A whole-of-government approach is needed to support rapid co-design of culturally safe support packages in response to COVID-19 and other national health emergencies, tailored appropriately to specific language groups and accounting for pre-existing health disparities.
- COVID-19
- Public health
- PUBLIC HEALTH
Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request.
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
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Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request.
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Footnotes
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Contributors DMM: formal analysis, investigation; data curation; writing—original draft; JA: conceptualisation, methodology, formal analysis, investigation; data curation; writing—review and editing; project administration; OM: formal analysis, investigation; data curation; writing—review and editing; project administration; CB: conceptualisation, methodology, investigation; writing—review and editing; project administration; EC: formal analysis, writing—review and editing; KP: conceptualisation, methodology, writing—review and editing; HD: conceptualisation, methodology, writing—review and editing; CB: conceptualisation, methodology, writing—review and editing; DM: conceptualisation, methodology, investigation; writing—review and editing; DZ: conceptualisation, methodology, investigation; writing—review and editing; UT: conceptualisation, methodology, investigation; writing—review and editing; YS: conceptualisation, methodology, investigation; writing—review and editing; TC: conceptualisation, methodology, investigation; writing—review and editing GV: conceptualisation, methodology, investigation; writing—review and editing; KJM: conceptualisation, methodology, formal analysis, writing—review and editing; project administration, guarantor.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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