The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted global public health and public trust in health recommendations. Trust in health information may waver in the context of health inequities. The objective of this scoping review is to map evidence on public perceptions of COVID-19 prevention information using the PROGRESS-Plus health equity framework. We systematically searched the MEDLINE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, PsycInfo, and Embase databases from January 2020 to July 2021. We identified 792 citations and 31 studies published in 15 countries that met all inclusion criteria. The majority (30/31; 96.7%) of the studies used an observational design (74.2% cross-sectional, 16.1% cohort, 6.5% case study, 3.2% experimental trials). Most studies (61.3%) reported on perception, understanding, and uptake, and 35.5% reported on engagement, compliance, and adherence to COVID-19 measures. The most frequently reported sources of COVID-related information were social media, TV, news (newspapers/news websites), and government sources. We identified five important equity factors related to public trust and uptake of recommendations: education and health literacy (19 studies; 61.3%), gender (15 studies; 48.4%), age (15 studies; 48.4%), socioeconomic status (11 studies; 35.5%), and place of residence (10 studies; 32.3%). Our review suggests that equity factors play a role in public perception of COVID-19 information and recommendations. A future systematic review could be conducted to estimate the impact of equity factors on perception and behavior outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the scientific community to collaborate in an unprecedented way, with the rapid and urgent generation and translation of new knowledge about the disease and its' causative agent. Iteratively, and at different levels of government and globally, population level guidance was created, and updated, resulting in the need for a living catalogue of guidelines, the eCOVID-19 Recommendations Map and Gateway to Contextualization (RecMap). This article focuses on the approach that was used to analyse barriers and opportunities associated with using the RecMap in public health in Canada. A mixed qualitative and quantitative approach data was used to inform this knowledge mobilization project and inform feedback on implementation of the eCOVID-19 RecMap. This approach involved surveying 110 attendees from a public health webinar. Following this webinar, an evidence brief and series of case studies were created and disseminated to 24 Canadian public health practitioners who attended a virtual workshop. This workshop identified barriers and opportunities to improve RecMap use. This study helped to shed light on the needs that public health practitioners have when finding, using, and disseminating public health guidelines. Through the workshop that was conducted, opportunities for public health guidelines can be categorized into four categories: 1) information access, 2) awareness, 3) public health development, and 4) usability. Barriers that were identified can also be categorized into four categories: 1) usability, 2) information maintenance, 3) public health guidance, 4) awareness. This work will help to inform the development and organization of future public health guidelines, and the needs that public health practitioners have when engaging with them.