TACOMA, Wash. — The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department is trying a new approach to get people vaccinated: bringing the vaccine directly to the community.
The health department, in association with the Tacoma Ministerial Alliance, set up a pop-up vaccine clinic on Monday in Shiloh Baptist Church. Residents in the Hilltop seemed to be responding well to the approach.
“Everybody was polite, my fear went away, so I feel fine,” said a resident of Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood who goes by the name Spicee. “I sat down for about 15 minutes, I feel fine, I don’t feel any symptoms, and I’m getting ready to go home.”
This new approach aims to ensure people in communities most likely to be infected with COVID-19 are protected.
Community organizers have spoken at length on how people in marginalized communities face more barriers when it comes to securing a vaccine, which is especially concerning as infection rates are likely to be higher in those same communities.
As a result, some also hope that this can be part of a larger push to restore faith in institutions that some feel has left the communities they’re supposed to serve behind.
“There is mistrust, a lot of conversations are about how do we make people trust this vaccine, and really I think we need to focus on making people more trustworthy of a system that’s failed them,” said Leah Ford, health promotion coordinator for the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.
Meanwhile, Tacoma city leaders are excited about the new method and hope this kind of outreach will bring everyone one step closer to the life many want to get back to.
“This is how we get our community vaccinated,” said Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards. “I think too often we set up clinics to have people come to us, when you do it this way — and this is why I’m so grateful for our health department — because they’re looking at it like if you want people to get the shot, you don’t ask the community to come to you, you go where the community is.”