COVID-19 prevention behaviors are congruent within social networks of disenfranchised Hispanic and criminal legal involved community members.

The COVID-19 (COVID) pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on people who have low income and identify as Hispanic or Latinx (PLIH) as well as those with criminal Legal Involvement (CLI). These two groups, and their intersection, are often disenfranchised from livable wage employment, basic social services, and healthcare, which are vital to prevent the spread of COVID. We examined baseline data from the Community Network-Driven COVID Testing of Marginalized Population in the Central US (C3) which included 1036 participants: 32.1% PLIH, 39.6% CLI, 10.6% who identified as both PLIH and CLI, and 17.6% who were neither PLIH nor CLI. Participants were more likely to engage in COVID preventive behaviors if their social networks engaged in the same behaviors. For example, participants had 9.38 times the odds of being vaccinated if more than 50%, according to their own estimation, of their network were vaccinated (aOR: 9.38, 95%, CI: 4.22–20.84).