Learning from the Pandemic: Sociodemographic Differences in COVID-19 Stigma among Healthcare Workers

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-421-1_15How to use a DOI?

Keywords

stigma; healthcare workers; socio-demographics

Abstract

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the novelty of the virus, the related social restrictions, and the surge of information often caused misperception amongst communities, including on stigma. This study assessed the stigma and discriminatory behaviours against anyone perceived to have been in contact with the virus, particularly health-care workers during the early days of the pandemic. Revisiting the stigma on COVID-19 can provide insights into targeted education and intervention in dealing with stigma on other communicable diseases. An online survey among health-care workers were conducted in end of 2020. We collected data from 305 respondents regarding stigma of COVID-19. Stigma scores were obtained by summation of 7 questions regarding stigma (range 0–7). Descriptive analyses were conducted to assess differences in level of stigma by different socio-demographic characteristics. There were 32.9% of respondents with stigma score >  = 6, mean stigma scores were 4.4 (s.d. 0.1). These includes questions on whether confirmed cases are those ignoring prevention protocol, perceived to hide their status, and needs to be isolated away from communities. There were differences by age, with older respondents had higher stigma score. Significant differences were also observed by education and educational background, with respondent of lower or non-health educational background had higher stigma score. Prevalence of stigma were relatively high (more than 30%), with differences by socio-demographics background. Elderly, and people of low or non-health education had higher stigma scores. Hence, health education to reduce stigma is particularly important for this subpopulation.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - V. Widyaningsih
AU  - R. Febrinasari
AU  - E. Poncorini
AU  - Sumardiyono
AU  - S. Mulyani
AU  - V. Sari
AU  - L. Pangesti
AU  - A. Probandari
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/05/22
TI  - Learning from the Pandemic: Sociodemographic Differences in COVID-19 Stigma among Healthcare Workers
BT  - Proceedings of the International Seminar and Workshop Public Health (ISWHOPHA 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 128
EP  - 137
SN  - 2468-5739
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-421-1_15
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-421-1_15
ID  - Widyaningsih2024
ER  -