How Promotoras De Salud Are Fighting Vaccine Conspiracies In Chicago's Latino Communities

Community health workers are a key part of Connecticut's public health response to COVID-19, particularly in marginalized communities. CHWs connect people to health care and other services, like rental assistance, help with contact tracing, and effectively increased vaccinations by taking the time to answer questions and dispel misinformation. Living in the communities they serve is a critical part of the model’s success and helps clients trust them more readily. The state now offers a CHW certification program, but the largely grant-funded model would be more sustainable with steady funding.

To extend aid to the Minnesotans most vulnerable to the coronavirus, state and local health departments, backed by $4 million in state funding and by community groups' on-the-ground help, conducted an extensive campaign of culturally appropriate outreach to offer free COVID-19 tests and healthcare advice. The efforts have included one-on-one contacts, email blasts to free-school-lunch recipients, and TV and radio ads on media targeting Black, Latinx, immigrant, and refugee populations. Immigrant communities and people of color have been disproportionately hit by the pandemic.

In Nashua, New Hampshire, public health officials have set up a Covid-19 testing site in the parking lot of a church to better serve minority communities. The testing site caters to both drive-up and walk-up appointments, and those who setup the site, are also taking part in a community outreach program that aims to better disperse information to local residents.

Accredited social health activists (ASHA) across India fight COVID-19 related misinformation on WhatsApp. ASHAs provide basic health care to people in their villages, which puts them on the frontline of treating COVID-19 patients and educating people to dispel the many myths about the virus and its treatments. ASHAs' local interactions often identify prevailing myths, which they quickly dispel in their face-to-face exchanges and by posting in the many local WhatsApp groups that have been created. The local groups have been an effective mode of educating people and helped ASHAs gain villagers’ trust.

In Madison, Wisconsin, the coronavirus pandemic is disproportionately impacting the Latino population, but the local community has joined together to advocate for better access to care and information. The efforts have included pop-up testing sites equipped with Spanish speakers, better-targeted messages, and non-medical support like food boxes.

A group of health professionals known as Latinx Advocacy Team & Interdisciplinary Network for COVID-19, or LATIN-19, is helping to bring coronavirus-specific health care access to North Carolina's Latino community. Because the group operates across county lines, they have become well-known amongst the local communities, helping to not only provide much-needed health care services, but also increase awareness around the dangers of the virus.

In Philadelphia, a group of Black doctors formed a medical team to address the Covid-19 testing disparity between different parts of the community. Known as the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium, the group offers appointments and makes house calls to test community members for the virus. Although they currently have many volunteers helping, the group is limited by the amount of testing supplies they have on hand.

South Korea has taken a softer approach to preventing and containing the coronavirus, in large part because they’ve prioritized accessible testing and have an already-existing strong and affordable healthcare system. Beyond that, the government has centered on citizen education – sending daily updates about new cases and provided a hotline for questions and concerns.

One rural hospital in Indiana vaccinated hundreds of immigrants from Central America by working with trusted community leaders and setting up a Hispanic Health Task Force. Health officials held vaccine clinics alongside trusted community members at locations that were familiar to residents, like a local Catholic church that offers Spanish-language services. The hospital and task force initially established community connections to distribute information about COVID-19, so they were able to utilize the connections to increase vaccination rates once the vaccine rolled out.

To help protect the predominantly Black community in Sedgwick County, Kansas, the county collaborated with local leaders and residents to create an information and messaging campaign that specifically addressed community concerns. Although the funding allocated to these efforts wasn't as plentiful as community leaders were asking for, the targeted outreach has helped to increase communication and trust around public health messaging.