The messy and confusing distribution of vaccines has prompted a broad array of nonprofits and volunteers nationwide to step in to fill the gaps.
Charities that normally work on international disaster relief are providing both their equipment and their skill in logistics. Those nonprofits, as well as the local social-service groups jumping into the fray, know well how crises — both personal and environmental — can exacerbate existing inequities. And many know they have expertise that can make a big difference.
Meanwhile, organizations that work on behalf of people of color, LGTBQ people, the homeless, elderly, and others are moving fast to smooth the way to get more people vaccinated. They are seeking not only to reduce the fear of vaccines but also to help local and state governments better understand which distribution policies will do the most good for the people they serve.
Many charities are also enlisting volunteers and employees who can help people who don’t speak English navigate vaccination sites. And nonprofits are racing to deploy computer-savvy young people who have the skills and patience to overcome the torturous state and city vaccine portals that have bewildered many people in search of shots.
Thomas Tighe, chief executive of Direct Relief, a humanitarian organization that works in 50 countries, says that when it comes to putting policy into practice — like a mass vaccination plan — “the best way to do that is to rely on those who perform operational functions every day.”
That’s why Direct Relief offered its Santa Barbara, Calif., headquarters as a backup storage site for Southern California’s vaccine supply. The state contributed five cold-box freezers and two ultra-low temperature freezers to supplement Direct Relief’s existing capacity to store medicines at cold temperatures at its headquarters. Once the vaccine supply ramps up, the state will store incoming vaccines at Direct Relief’s facility before they’re disbursed throughout Southern California.
Also in Southern California, Community Organized Relief Effort, a nonprofit founded by the actor Sean Penn to work in Haiti, is now collaborating with the Los Angeles mayor’s office and fire department to run Covid-19 testing sites throughout the city, as well as mobile vaccination units and a mass-vaccination site at Dodger Stadium.
So far, more than 342,000 shots have been administered at sites run by CORE — more than 171,000 doses at Dodger Stadium.
CORE plans to take what it is learning in Los Angeles — especially about how to reach more people of color — to cities such as Atlanta and New Orleans and rural regions like the Navajo Nation.
CORE started its vaccination work at Dodger Stadium but quickly realized mostly white and affluent people were showing up there, even though people of color have been hardest hit by Covid-19. In response, it decided to drive vaccines into low-income neighborhoods that are predominantly Hispanic and Black. By equipping vans and camper trailers with medical-grade refrigerators, CORE is able to set up clinics on sidewalks and in church parking lots.
CORE hires neighborhood residents to canvass the area at least two weeks in advance to spread the word about the opportunity to get vaccinated close to home. When the vaccines arrive, CORE employees set up pop-up tents and traffic cones to guide people and register them for walk-up vaccine appointments.
Bilingual staff members are on hand to assist those who speak only Spanish. To date, 70 percent of the people who have received a Covid-19 vaccine at a CORE mobile vaccination unit have been Black.
While Los Angeles contributed funds for mass vaccination and mobile units and sometimes transports vaccines into neighborhoods, that isn’t enough to ensure everyone who wants a vaccine gets one, says Ann Lee, chief executive of CORE. The city’s efforts relied on fine tuning from CORE and other trusted community organizations to make sure as many Los Angeles residents as possible understood why and how to get a vaccine.
Help With Logistics
Team Rubicon, a relief organization that deploys military veterans to assist in disaster recovery, is also using its logistical savvy to bolster vaccination efforts.
In late December, one of its volunteers — who happens to be the emergency medical officer at Tucson Medical Center — helped the charity launch a pilot mass-vaccination program to serve Pima County, Ariz.
While health-care professionals handle inoculations, Team Rubicon volunteers manage operations — setting up tents at the vaccination site, directing traffic, and handing out information on the vaccine “so that doctors can continue being doctors and nurses can continue being nurses,” says Art delaCruz, chief operating officer of the nonprofit.
After the success of the pilot program, Team Rubicon joined five other veterans organizations last month to create the Veterans Coalition for Vaccination. The organizations are working with localities to distribute Covid-19 vaccinations. In addition to that effort, the coalition will also start an ad campaign designed to help Americans feel safe about getting a Covid-19 vaccine.
DelaCruz says Team Rubicon wanted to get involved not just to help protect citizens with vaccinations. Fewer volunteers were able to help out last fall because they were at risk of contracting a severe case of Covid-19.
But if more Americans are inoculated quickly, more people will be able to volunteer safely as natural disasters hit. Hurricanes strike in the fall he, notes, and a lack of volunteers would harm rescue efforts.
“If this goes smoothly, we’ll actually serve more communities in the fall,” he says.
Registration Maze
Volunteers power many nonprofits’ efforts to support vaccine distribution. In Washington, D.C., the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center tapped college students from the George Washington University chapter of the Jewish campus-life group, Hillel, to manage its work to assist older people in securing vaccination appointments.
Dava Schub, chief executive of the JCC, knew she could reach people over age 65 through the center’s network, but she was reluctant to ask her overburdened staff to take on such a time-consuming project. She thought about news articles she’d read about how young and old adults are struggling with feelings of isolation during the pandemic. What if there was a way to connect those groups to each other — and help boost vaccine access along the way?
The Hillel club at George Washington University was eager to help, and Repair the World, a national Jewish relief organization, developed a system to launch similar efforts nationwide that will encourage college students and other young adults to volunteer to help those in need get shots.
Just over a month after the project launched, 1,088 older people in the Washington, D.C., area have signed up to get the group’s help making vaccination appointments.
Hillel’s volunteer force has expanded to 408, pulling not just young adults from George Washington University but also students from Georgetown University, recent graduates of both institutions, and their peers. To date, volunteers have secured 340 vaccine appointments for older people.
Adena Kirstein, head of the George Washington Hillel chapter, says young volunteers feel grateful to help people who remind them of their grandparents.
And older people appreciate the help.
“Getting vaccinated liberates me to see and hug my adult children and grandchildren after a painfully long wait,” one beneficiary wrote in a thank-you note to the group. Another person said that the volunteer who quickly secured his parents’ vaccination appointments — after he’d tried unsuccessfully for weeks — was his hero of the year.
Grassroots Input
Across the country, nonprofits are bringing a grassroots perspective to bureaucratic decision making. In Washington, D.C., Alicia Horton, executive director of the homeless service organization Thrive DC, has been sharing feedback on the city’s plan to vaccinate homeless people with the chair of the D.C. Council’s committee on human services.
The city is vaccinating homeless people at shelters, but Horton says many who ordinarily rely on shelters have been avoiding them during the pandemic. So she has pushed the city to develop a “street-based” approach that brings vaccines to encampments across the city.
Thrive DC is located in what has been the epicenter of the city’s outbreak for the past year. Since November, it has run a Covid-19 testing site at its offices, where homeless people and others in need can take showers, use computers, and collect free groceries. Thrive DC includes public-health infographics in English and Spanish in each grocery bag to show people the importance of wearing masks, washing hands, social distancing, and getting vaccinated.
Horton says vaccinating homeless people helps prevent the spread of the virus, and “that ultimately helps the city at large.”
Trust in Vaccines
Another effort nonprofits are undertaking is to build trust in the vaccines and the inoculation process.
Among those especially in need of persuasion: LGBTQ people, who often avoid doctors for fear of bias, says Mardi Moore, executive director of Out Boulder County, in Colorado. To combat that skepticism, Out Boulder County is gearing up to manage a vaccination site, which will give the group the chance to respond to those concerns.
The organization also polled people in the greater Denver and Boulder regions about their level of confidence in the Covid-19 vaccine. Seventeen percent of LGBTQ respondents said they weren’t sure whether they’d accept an inoculation if it was made immediately available to them. Among those who didn’t identify as LGBTQ, that share dropped to 9 percent.
The poll was small — just 272 respondents. But it is the only survey of LGBTQ vaccine hesitancy in the county to date.
At the Out Boulder County vaccine site, the nonprofit will run its own multilingual registration process, aimed at reaching not only LGBTQ people but also the area’s large Hispanic and Nepali populations. Registering for a vaccine through the charity — rather than the county — is critical for building trust and ensuring ease of accessibility, Moore says.
The organization is also in the midst of a $40,000 fundraising drive to launch a statewide television ad campaign to educate LGBTQ Coloradans about the safety and importance of the Covid-19 vaccine. The media campaign will answer some of the questions raised by LGBTQ people in the survey, such as whether the vaccine is safe for individuals who are HIV-positive, pregnant, or breastfeeding.
The drive has not only helped Moore push for greater visibility for Boulder’s LGBTQ residents but it has also helped her connect with other nonprofits working to vaccinate others who might feel left out of the process.
The hard numbers Out Boulder County collected helped get the group a seat at the table with local policy makers, Moore says. “We were able to get to those tables and say, ‘Hey, what about us?’”
