Colleges and universities in Arkansas looking to encourage covid-19 vaccinations have been approached about joining a new statewide project to help with their campus efforts.
Separately, some universities in the fall 2021 semester offered incentives to students for getting vaccinated against covid-19. Decisions on whether to continue such incentives into the spring come as covid-19 hospitalizations and case counts have in recent weeks been on the rise statewide and elsewhere.
"We don't have high levels of vaccination in the state of Arkansas and we want to get more and more people vaccinated. And colleges are a great place to try to do that more efficiently than we have," said Ben Amick, an associate dean for research at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health.
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Amick has taken on a leading role in what he described as a "very large initiative" that would support schools in various types of efforts of their choosing to encourage covid-19 vaccination.
The project awaits funding from the state Department of Health and could begin "hopefully in January," Amick said.
He declined to say how much funding has been requested. Amick said the dollars would come from support provided to the state Department of Health from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to address covid-19 in Arkansas.
The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville held weekly drawings beginning in early September that were open to students vaccinated against covid-19, regardless of when they received their vaccination.
UA-Fayetteville spokesman Mark Rushing said 355 students won prizes that included $500 scholarships and $100 gift cards.
"More than 12%" of prizewinners received their covid-19 vaccination in the fall semester, Rushing said in an email.
"While there aren't any current plans for an incentive effort moving forward, the university's COVID-19 Response team will reassess that along with other campus guidance before classes begin Jan. 18," Rushing said.
The new omicron coronavirus variant has put new attention on covid-19 vaccine booster shots.
"The university encourages the campus community to get vaccinated and to receive booster shots," Rushing said.
Among other colleges, the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith -- which has roughly one-seventh the enrollment of the Fayetteville campus -- provided incentives to 28 vaccinated students this fall, a spokeswoman said.
But UAFS will not continue with the incentives into the spring, according to Lee Krehbiel, UAFS' vice chancellor for enrollment management and student affairs.
"We know from overall data and anecdotes that our vaccination rates have gone up, but there is no data definitively tying the increase in vaccination rates to the LionsVax program," Krehbiel said in a statement.
He added that the university is considering taking part in the statewide effort this spring. Krehbiel said for UAFS there is consideration of an effort supporting "student-to-student communication encouraging vaccination."
The costs for such vaccination incentives varied widely between the two universities, but both described federal coronavirus-related funding as being used to pay for the expense.
UA-Fayetteville provided $50,000 in support of the incentive program, including 45 $500 scholarships as well as $100 parking permit credits, plus some other prizes, Rushing said.
Donated prizes to UA-Fayetteville included $100 dining gift cards from on-campus food service provider Chartwells, $100 bookstore gift cards from Barnes & Noble, and "numerous tickets and vouchers to concerts and events at the Walmart AMP [Arkansas Music Pavilion], Walton Arts Center, TheatreSquared and the Faulkner Performing Arts Center," Rushing said.
UAFS incentives, which included meal plan credits, computer tablets and numerous smaller prizes, totalled $7,279, according to Krehbiel, with no prizes donated.
VACCINATION RATES
In mid-November, most colleges in Arkansas received data on their covid-19 vaccination rates for students and employees.
At four-year universities with at least 1,000 students, the fully vaccinated rate among students ranged from 32% to 59%, with the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff having the lowest rate and the University of Central Arkansas the highest.
Only vaccine shots distributed in Arkansas counted towards the vaccination rate, however, according to a spokeswoman for the state Division of Higher Education.
A data sharing agreement with the state Department of Health allowed health officials to calculate the rates based on preliminary non-high school enrollment in the fall 2021 semester, said Alisha Lewis, a spokeswoman for the state Division of Higher Education.
Lack of data on out-of-state vaccinations means the rates do not fully account for all vaccinations.
The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, for example, has roughly 30% of its students coming from outside Arkansas, according to state data. So the 32% rate of students fully vaccinated may be lower than if the rate factored in vaccinations done outside of Arkansas.
John Brown University, a private Christian college in Siloam Springs, on its website reported a fully vaccinated rate of 45.7% for its students as of Nov. 5, more than 7 percentage points higher than the state data. The campus has roughly 55% of its students hailing from outside Arkansas, though it isn't clear from data shared with colleges how many out-of-state students were vaccinated in Arkansas.
UA-Fayetteville, the largest university in the state, had a fully vaccinated rate for its students of 47%, according to the recent state data. Roughly 45% of its students are from outside Arkansas.
"All information about the vaccination status of our campus community is beneficial," Rushing said in an email.
The rate of fully vaccinated students at UAFS was 44%, according to the data provided to colleges on Nov. 17 and released under the state's public disclosure law.
Krehbiel said it's likely, given the university's location, that many students opted to get vaccinated in nearby Oklahoma or Missouri. He added that the data provided by the state "were close to our internal projections, and they are meaningful in terms of confirmation."
UAFS' 44% fully vaccinated rate for students shows "that there is significant vaccine hesitancy, and thus room for continued encouragement of the vaccines," Krehbiel said. "The data may influence our decision to participate in the new peer-to-peer student driven model."
PLANS
Covid-19 cases, apart from being a health concern, also can disrupt schedules and planned events. Colleges such as UA-Fayetteville have told students who test positive for covid-19 to self-isolate for 10 days.
Individuals who are fully vaccinated -- defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as occurring two weeks after taking the second-dose in a two-dose series of vaccines, for example -- aren't asked by the CDC to quarantine after coming in close contact with someone who has covid-19 unless they experience symptoms. The CDC states close contacts should get tested 5-7 days after exposure, however.
Some private universities in Arkansas also offered incentives to encourage student vaccination, including Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia. The state data listed a 54% fully-vaccinated rate for students of the college.
Philander Smith College, a historically Black college in Little Rock, required students to either get vaccinated against covid-19 or be tested weekly for infection. The college's fully vaccinated rate for its students was 37%.
State agencies entered into a data sharing agreement earlier in the year allowing college enrollment information to be matched with vaccination data.
The state Health Department's chief science officer, Dr. Namvar Zohoori, has said that schools receive information about percentages and numbers rather than lists of students' names, with the Health Department following medical privacy laws.
Several universities outside Arkansas also offered some type of incentives -- often in the form of weekly drawings for prizes -- to encourage student vaccinations. Some other large public universities in nearby states including Mississippi State University and the University of Missouri have said they will stop offering prizes to students vaccinated against covid-19 after doing so this fall.
A spokeswoman for Texas A&M University said no decision had yet been made about continuing with vaccine incentives.
Ella Silvis, a 19-year-old sophomore at UA-Fayetteville, won a $100 parking permit credit in the university's weekly incentive drawings encouraging covid-19 vaccination.
"I think the university should keep the incentive program as long as COVID is still an issue, and it should be especially encouraged as the group of high school seniors prepare to start school at the U of A," Silvis said in an email.
But the incentive drawing was not a factor for Silvis in getting vaccinated.
"I heard about the incentives at the beginning of the fall semester. I was already vaccinated at that point," Silvis said, with the decision to get vaccinated influenced "by my school and healthcare workers that are close to me."
Reece Hodgson, a 20-year-old junior at UA-Fayetteville, said he had gotten vaccinated before learning of the university's incentives. Hodgson also won a $100 parking permit credit in the incentive drawings.
"I just thought that it was the right thing to do for public health," Hodgson said in an email. "But I think that the incentives have been a significant motivation for many other students."
In Arkansas, Amick said that he's open to the idea of the statewide project supporting vaccine incentives, if a campus chooses to adopt such an effort. The statewide project is not just about boosting vaccination rates among students, but also for faculty and staff, Amick said.
He said it's early to gauge the interest of colleges in the project, but there are "a lot that are considering it."