@article{14669,
  author = {Timothy D Dye and Lisette Alcantara and Shazia Siddiqi and Monica Barbosu and Saloni Sharma and Tiffany Panko and Eva Pressman},
  title = {Risk of COVID-19-related bullying, harassment and stigma among healthcare workers: an analytical cross-sectional global study},
  abstract = {<jats:sec><jats:title>Objectives</jats:title><jats:p>Essential healthcare workers (HCW) uniquely serve as both COVID-19 healers and, potentially, as carriers of SARS-CoV-2. We assessed COVID-19-related stigma and bullying against HCW controlling for social, psychological, medical and community variables.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Design</jats:title><jats:p>We nested an analytical cross-sectional study of COVID-19-related stigma and bullying among HCW within a larger mixed-methods effort assessing COVID-19-related lived experience and impact. Adjusted OR (aOR) and 95% CIs evaluated the association between working in healthcare settings and experience of COVID-19-related bullying and stigma, controlling for confounders. Thematic qualitative analysis provided insight into lived experience of COVID-19-related bullying.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Setting</jats:title><jats:p>We recruited potential participants in four languages (English, Spanish, French, Italian) through Amazon Mechanical Turk’s online workforce and Facebook.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Participants</jats:title><jats:p>Our sample included 7411 people from 173 countries who were aged 18 years or over.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Findings</jats:title><jats:p>HCW significantly experienced more COVID-19-related bullying after controlling for the confounding effects of job-related, personal, geographic and sociocultural variables (aOR: 1.5; 95% CI 1.2 to 2.0). HCW more frequently believed that people gossip about others with COVID-19 (OR: 2.2; 95% CI 1.9 to 2.6) and that people with COVID-19 lose respect in the community (OR: 2.3; 95% CI 2.0 to 2.7), both which elevate bullying risk (OR: 2.7; 95% CI 2.3 to 3.2, and OR: 3.5; 95% CI 2.9 to 4.2, respectively). The lived experience of COVID-19-related bullying relates frequently to public identities as HCW traverse through the community, intersecting with other domains (eg, police, racism, violence).</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Interpretation</jats:title><jats:p>After controlling for a range of confounding factors, HCW are significantly more likely to experience COVID-19-related stigma and bullying, often in the intersectional context of racism, violence and police involvement in community settings.</jats:p></jats:sec>},
  year = {2020},
  journal = {BMJ Open},
  volume = {10},
  pages = {e046620},
  month = {12/2020},
  issn = {2044-6055},
  doi = {10.1136/bmjopen-2020-046620},
}