The City of Long Beach and the health department are working with community-based partners to advance vaccine equity through community-based, mobile clinic events focused on disproportionately impacted Long Beach residents, specifically Black, Latinx and Cambodian community members. On February 10th, the City launched a mobile clinic for Black adults in partnership with community-based partners Elite Skills Development and the Long Beach Minister’s Alliance. The clinic event, “Black and Well in the LBC,” successfully vaccinated over 200 older adults, 95% of whom identified as Black or African American. In this video, we are joined by Katie Balderas, City of Long Beach Equity Officer and Sharon Jackson, community based leader with Elite Skills Development, as they discuss the strategies that made this community and faith-based partnership a success.

Riverside County Public Health Department, in partnership with the Coachella Valley Equity Collaborative (spearheaded by the Desert Healthcare District & Foundation (DHCD) and community-based partners, like TODEC), launched mobile vaccination clinics that brought COVID-19 vaccines directly to farmworkers in the fields. Community-based partners helped register farmworkers, who have been some of the most impacted community members due to COVID-19, in person during registration events at their worksites. They also worked to answer questions in preferred languages, including indigenous languages such as Purépecha. Partners in these efforts worked to address a broad range of concerns during vaccine registration and administration, including concerns related to vaccine side effects, immigration status and public charge. To date, the mobile vaccination clinics have successfully vaccinated well over 5,000 farmworkers throughout the Eastern Coachella Valley (and counting!). In this video, we are joined by Salomeh Wagaw, Epidemiologist with the Riverside County Public Health Department, Alejandro Espinoza, Program Officer with Desert Healthcare District and Foundation, and Luz Gallegos, Executive Director of TODEC, as they describe their comprehensive, multi-sector efforts to reach frontline farmworkers.

In St. Louis, like in many places across the U.S., low-income communities and communities of color have disproportionately shouldered the burden of COVID-19 sickness and death and now face inequities in COVID-19 vaccination efforts. Dr. Fredrick Echols with the City of St. Louis Department of Health was determined to proactively engage and outreach to communities most disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic through strategic community-based and intra-governmental partnerships. With the strategic engagement of the Alana Green, Executive Director of the St. Louis Housing Authority, and staff from the Housing Authority’s Resident Initiatives Team, the departments worked to outreach to Housing Authority residents directly. Engaging the Housing Authority as a trusted partner and messenger for this vaccine effort resulted in the ability to vaccinate over 300 senior residents of the Housing Authorityin just one clinic effort, roughly 98% of whom identified as Black/African American!The partnership between the Health Department and Housing Authority serves as a promising model for intra-governmental partnerships to reach disproportionately impacted community members in vaccine distribution and administration. In this video, we are joined by Dr. Fredrick Echols, Director of the City of St. Louis Health Department and Alana Green, Executive Director of the St. Louis Housing Authority, as they discuss the importance of trusted, intra-governmental partnerships in vaccine distribution efforts.

In January of this past year, in response to data on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Chicago’s communities of color, especially Black and Latinx Chicagoans, Chicago City Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced the launch of the City-wide vaccine equity plan, Protect Chicago Plus. The plan is a targeted COVID-19 vaccine distribution effort designed with equity as the central strategy. The plan responds to the uneven distribution of COVID-19 burden on Black and Latinx Chicagoans by focusing vaccine supply and resources on the 15 most disproportionately impacted neighborhoods throughout Chicago, co-developing vaccine distribution strategies with neighborhood-based community stakeholders, including tailored, on the ground, outreach and engagement strategies. Protect Chicago Plus is a unified effort between the City of Chicago, the Chicago Department of Public Health, and local community partners with the goal of changing the map of disease burden and ending the pandemic. The City’s efforts have successfully increased the percent of 1st dose vaccines going to Black and Latinx Chicagoans from 18% in the first week of distribution to close to 59% in the most recent week of distribution; a percent equal to the City’s total Black and Latinx population!

In this video, we are joined by Christina Anderson, the Chicago Public Health Department’s Chief of Operations for the COVID Response and Sandi Brown, the Department’s Chief Racial Equity Officer, to discuss on the ground strategies and approaches that have helped to make these efforts a success.

Health leaders from The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s (LADPH) Center for Health Equity, in partnership with key community stakeholders with lived experience and organizations that serve communities with disabilities, have developed and are working to implement a set of core recommendations to improve access to COVID-19 vaccinations for individuals living with disabilities. The recommendations developed are a recognition of the urgent need to develop processes and systems to improve accessibility for communities with disabilities throughout Los Angeles County. While the recommendations address current COVID-19 vaccination efforts, these recommendations may be applied to COVID-19 testing and broader emergency response activities. In this video, we are joined by Heather Jue Northover, LADPH Center for Health Equity Director and Hector Ochoa, Director of Public Policy for the Southern California Resource Services for Independent Living, as they discuss the importance of centering individuals with lived experience in designing vaccine distribution solutions that truly work for all.

The Orange County Health Care Agency (OCHCA) has focused their mobile COVID-19 vaccination clinic efforts on communities most disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. In response to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on transgender, gender nonconforming (GNC), and gender nonbinary (GNB) residents, specifically residents of color, OCHCA co-led a mobile vaccination clinic event with their community partner, Alianza Translatinx. The event was designed to foster an inclusive space, free of discrimination or judgement, to ensure transgender, GNC, and GNB residents felt safe and comfortable receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. From registration, to vaccination, to observation, the partners took intentional steps to create an affirming and welcoming space. Thanks to in-person and online outreach efforts from partners like Alianza Translatinx, they were able to administer over 250 vaccines to community residents, the majority of whom were members of the Orange County transgender, GNC and GNB community. OCHCA and their partners plan to build on the success of this event in order to reach more disproportionately impacted transgender residents throughout Orange County. In this video, we are joined by Hieu Nguyen, Director of OCHCA Office of Population Health & Equity and Khloe Rios Wyatt, President and Chief Executive Officer of Alianza Translatinx, as they discuss the importance of creating safe, inclusive, affirming spaces for transgender, GNC and GNB community members in COVID-19 vaccination distribution and administration.

In Utah, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) communities have some of the highest infection, hospitalization, and death rates relative to their population. The same disturbing trend can be seen in other places such as California, Louisiana, and Washington state, and other states that disaggregate NHPI data from the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) category. Recognizing the longstanding challenges that NHPI communities have faced, the Utah Pacific Islander Health Coalition (UPIHC), in partnership with several local health departments, like the Utah County Health Department, and the Utah State Health Department, mobilized early to begin hosting weekly vaccination clinics focused on increasing access to vaccinations for NHPI community members in a safe, trusting, and culturally affirming way. Many of the mobile vaccination clinic efforts aimed at reaching NHPI community members in Utah are coordinated partnerships through the UPIHC member network. The mobile vaccination clinics are tailored to create a space that is culturally grounded, and feels safe and comfortable for the NHPI community, which includes partnering with faith-based partners and hosting clinics in familiar locations. The partnership efforts between Utah’s local health departments (LHDs) and UPIHC has been a leading factor behind the distribution of 1,000’s of vaccines to the NHPI community throughout the State.

In this video, we are joined by Isabella Lesa, Community Health Worker with the Utah County Health Department and Jake Fitisemanu, Co-Founder and Board Member of the Utah Pacific Islander Coalition and Program Manager with the Utah State Department of Health, as they discuss the importance of disaggregated data and culturally grounded efforts in reaching NHPI community members in vaccine distribution.