The target population for Ottawa County Health Equity Outreach was the following:
- The Latinx population in Ottawa County has higher hospitalization rates due to COVID-19 compared to the County overall. (approximately 30,212). OCDPH successfully reached 46.3% Completion / 51.2% Initial Latinx for vaccinations.
- Workers in food processing, food manufacturing, and agriculture carry a disproportionate amount of risk regarding COVID-19 exposure due to proximity to coworkers, long shifts, and shared transportation to work. (Ottawa County also has one of the largest seasonal farmworker populations in the state, one of only two counties with over 12,000 seasonal farmworkers and household members (in 2013).
- Communities in Ottawa County are more socially vulnerable, increasing the risk for COVID-19 infection and poorer health outcomes. (approximately 52,723) - OCDPH successfully reached 47.2% Completion / 52.9% Socially Vulnerable for vaccinations.
The root cause of the problem is systemic and will continue to need attention and development. One concern was trust - some residents did not know who to believe or if they would be safe (concerned of citizenship). Language barriers and understanding of terminology were an issue and concern - residents needed translation services. Additionally, there are ongoing barriers regarding access to healthcare. Finally, residents needed to make a connection to feel comfortable and safe. The safety permitted the message to be communicated and then reduced hesitancy and trust concerns.
Ottawa County Department of Public Health has a long history of leadership and outreach to the Latinx population, and consistently partners with various and diverse organizations when developing and implementing public health interventions such as the 2021 Migrant Health Survey, COVID-19 Vaccine Outreach, Ottawa Food, communicable disease testing, and screening, and the Community Health Improvement Plan to list a few. These organizations include but are not limited to faith-based organizations, academic and health care institutions, non-profit entities, and collaboratives such as the Allegan/Ottawa/Barry Migrant Resource Council who directly and primarily serves Latinx individuals. As a government agency, we serve all Ottawa County residents, and yet because we are a government agency, we recognize that we are not viewed as a key, trusted advisor by all. We continue to work on strengthening trust with the community, and the activities.
The goal of OCDPH was to utilize all available resources to vaccinate all eligible persons in the public against COVID-19 through an equitable and fair approach. The focus being to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake in Ottawa County and ensure we were doing so in the most effective and ethical way possible to achieve a high percentage of vaccinated Ottawa County residents.
Mass vaccination clinics acted as centralized locations throughout the county to ensure high numbers of people were vaccinated quickly. While mass vaccine clinics reached a large portion of our county residents, this was not the only way OCDPH would be successful. It was not the best way to reach all residents that may have health access needs. OCDPH needed to ensure that barriers were removed from identified populations, appointment blocks were held to permit more time for a signup, and we needed to promote a greater understanding of vaccination hesitancy. These lessons were all learned through our community partnerships with trusted advisors.
As the vaccine availability shifted in the community and the demand wanned, OCDPH was challenged to move to a NEW approach for vaccinations: community strike teams. As one member coined, Meeting people where they're at and trying to make it as convenient as possible by going to folks.”
These partners of health equity continued to meet OCDPH on our journey by ensuring support and providing necessary feedback to meet our vaccine goals.
Community strike teams began with OCDPH finding community events, arranging locations, determining need, advertising the clinic, vaccinating at the clinic, educating about the vaccine, and attempting to bring people to the site while vaccinating. This was a large role for 3 to 4 people to handle as a community strike team.
Our partnership for health equity advised that OCDPH needed to focus on core competencies and the community partners provided a shared team support role. We worked collaboratively together, with public health focusing on education of vaccines and vaccinations and partners focusing on scheduling, outreach, communication, and marketing. Community partners already had the TRUST of the community in the neighborhoods that needed the outreach. Together we were able to make a strategic effort as a community.
The model consisted of a shared calendar to determine availability, then the partners would schedule vaccine locations and coordinate setup. Public Health would vaccinate and educate at the events, all while community coordinators would be on-site to market and bring people to the vaccination through prizes, gift cards, incentives, etc.
It was a true demonstration of a community approach to Vaccination: Trusting Relationships that allowed for an Established Connection, which granted Public Health to Provide a Need Service (preventative health) which resulted in what we consider priceless: vaccinations and trust in county government.
Together the group was able to vaccinate 16,650 people plus using the Strike Team methodology at approximately 124 clinics from Feb 2021 thru Nov 2021.
Some of our success:
- We have been hosting over 124 pop-up clinics throughout the year at various sites to try and make access easy and to provide education and incentives. We have hosted clinics at local churches, large community events, popular retail businesses, and various cultural festivals.
- Community Spoke hired outreach coordinators to assist public health in the vaccination efforts
- United Way and Community Spoke were able to assist and provide incentives as an attractive benefit for vaccination
- We were able to gather data on the demographics of attendees to ensure our goals were being met: Age, Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Zip Codes
- Our overall vaccination rates are difficult to determine because the partnership have been ongoing from the beginning working to ensure health equity and access to care in Ottawa County.
- The partners acted as an advisory council to public health
- Partners outreach to each of their communities as a trusted advisor on behalf of public health
- Successful development of messaging by community partners on vaccinations, videos, and Latinx media developed for weekly outreach.