08/12/2021

Expanding Vaccine Access and Overcoming Hesitancy

Get Out the Vaccine is working to overcome hesitancy and dispel rumors

With more than half of the US population having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, the shape of our vaccine rollout is changing. And while the unvaccinated people who remain are often lumped together and generalized as “hesitant” or “anti-vaccine,” many unvaccinated individuals have significant trouble accessing healthcare, or reliable information about the vaccine. Community leaders must understand the specific barriers and concerns that are preventing different groups from accessing the vaccines, and they must deploy targeted strategies to address them.

Get Out the Vaccine (GOTVax) is a Boston-based initiative working to reach this heterogeneous group of unvaccinated Americans by engaging with disenfranchised populations and adapting political campaign strategies to aid the vaccine rollout. By involving community leaders, health care providers, electoral campaign staff and a local supply chain company, GOTVax bridges the gap between community engagement and healthcare accessibility through our pop-up vaccine clinics, which reached up to seven clinics per week in mid-May. Although our clinics initially served hundreds of patients per clinic from March through May, the number of patients at our clinics is now dwindling, despite the fact that communities of color in Boston still have disproportionately low vaccination rates.

In response, GOTVax revamped its operations to better reach unvaccinated residents. Our approach applied the Surgo Ventures framework, built from their analysis of nationally representative survey data on American attitudes toward the vaccine.

Please select this link to read the complete article from SSIR.