Covid VACCS (Vaccination Access at Community Centers)
Funder: Gil Omenn and Martha Darling Initiative for Trusted and Trustworthy Scientific Innovation
Community health centers are key providers of vaccinations and vaccine education. During Covid-19 vaccine roll-out in early 2021, the federal government disbursed vaccines directly to Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) to facilitate vaccination of their patient populations, which are disproportionately minority and medically underserved.
The goal of this rapid-response project is to understand how frontline vaccine providers serving disproportionately vulnerable communities responded to barriers to vaccine access, patients’ concerns about Covid-19 vaccination, and related issues of trust during a public health emergency.
Method: Interviews with 20 frontline providers across two FQHCs in New York and Tennessee.
Publication
Advancing Covid Vaccination Equity at Federally Qualified Health Centers: a Rapid Qualitative Review
Journal of General Internal Medicine
“We’re here to take care of our community”: Lessons Learned from the U.S. Federal Health Center Covid-19 Vaccine Program by Johanna T. Crane, Rachel Fabi, Danielle Pacia, Carolyn Neuhaus, and Nancy Berlinger
Slides
Relational Public Health Ethics and Federally Qualified Health Centers’ Role in Vaccine Distribution, presented by Danielle M. Pacia, MBE, Research Associate, The Hastings Center