Dissemination through trusted credible messengers: 133 weeks of the Flint Community Webinar on COVID-19

Community access to evidence-based information is important, especially during a pandemic, because it can impact the awareness and use of health behaviors that affect health disparities. This paper describes the creation of a weekly webinar series about COVID-19 directed toward community members, and the extent to which the webinars were found useful and increased awareness of evidence-based information and services. Data were collected from Zoom attendance reports, YouTube views, and survey responses over 133 weeks from March 20, 2020 through September 30, 2022. The webinar reached a minimum of 877 participants across all webinars, who represented more than 9,190 hr of attendance. The webinar also had 17,303 views on YouTube. A consistent base of weekly attendees (e.g., service providers, community members) reported increasing levels of satisfaction and usefulness of information shared during the webinar over time. The selection of and collaboration with trusted credible messengers (TCMs) to share information and lessons learned about this dissemination strategy are discussed. This study supports the use of a community webinar series to disseminate evidence-based, locally relevant information through TCMs to improve community access to knowledge of health information and resource utility.