Through community-academic partnerships in Boston and Chicago, investigators will recruit and randomly assign POLs who identify as Black with rheumatic conditions to two training arms in each city. Arms 1 and 2 will receive the same core curriculum addressing COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, safety and efficacy. POLs will work in their communities to distributed information they learned in the trainings to members of their social network. The investigators will gather information about these social networks, assessing for differences in characteristics such as size, location, and who is in it (percentage of family, percentage Black, percentage with rheumatic conditions).
To establish the efficacy of a community-based POL (Popular Opinion Leader) intervention with two different trainings designed to increase COVID-19 vaccine and booster uptake and reduce hesitancy among social networks of Black individuals with rheumatic conditions. The investigators will also determine the structure and composition of the personal and outreach social networks of POLs.