Supporting Hispanic community leaders to increase Covid-19 vaccination.

In a country that is spending $160 billion to provide free vaccines to all who want them, over half of unvaccinated Hispanic adults are worried among other things, that they may have to pay out of pocket for the vaccine according to a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Some aspects of vaccinating an entire country are very hard to tackle, and one of the most important is making sure everyone feels safe to get vaccinated regardless of their income, race or immigrant status. For Hispanics, this means making sure that they are getting the right vaccination information from their own trusted community messengers, healthcare workers, faith leaders, and community organizers and outreach workers.

President Biden has started messaging that the vaccine is free and his administration has rightly amped up the urgency of getting as many people in the U.S. vaccinated as possible. And, if it is reasonable for this urgency to be proportional to Americans’ likelihood of hospitalization or death from the virus, then this analysis from the Brookings Institution tells us that it is more than twice as urgent to vaccinate Hispanic Americans compared to whites, and more than three times as urgent for Black Americans. This is simply because the age-adjusted COVID-19 death rate is 2.5 and 3.6 times that for whites, for Hispanic and Black Americans respectively.

The most recent data reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicates that Black and Hispanic people have received smaller shares of vaccinations compared to their shares of cases and compared to their shares of the total population in most states. So while the United States has made great progress, there is much work to do to ensure that we protect those most vulnerable to serious illness and death from COVID-19.

There are access issues specific to the Hispanic community that must be addressed if we are to increase vaccination rates. For example, according to KFF, 52% Hispanic adults are more likely to say that they are worried about paying for the vaccine, and 49% are concerned they won’t be able to get the vaccine from a place they trust. This demonstrates that the community, which is more likely than other groups to lack health insurance, has not been fully informed that the vaccine is available free of charge.

While the federal government is not requiring documentation for vaccines, there are widespread reports that vaccination sites are requesting documentation to deter vaccine tourism or for other reasons; this is hindering vaccine distribution among U.S. Latinos, who are more likely than other groups to have immigrants in their families or be immigrants themselves. More than half of Hispanic adults who received the vaccine told the Kaiser Family Foundation that they were asked to provide a form of government identification; 15% indicated that they were asked for a Social Security number specifically. This is a significant barrier; undocumented immigrants are eligible for the vaccine, but lack social security numbers. And unvaccinated legal immigrants as well as U.S. citizens with immigrant family members reported fears that documentation requests at vaccination sites may jeopardize their immigration status or that of loved ones.

New America’s New Practice Lab undertook a study with immigrant communities in Colorado to better understand obstacles to vaccination and develop recommendations to improve access. Our approach centered on the idea of meeting the communities where they are and leveraging existing social leadership to reach underserved populations. In collaboration with the Colorado Department of Public Health (CDPHE) and the Governor’s Office, the study recommended three practices:

1. Find and collaborate with trusted community messengers who can amplify verified vaccination information;
2. Test vaccine content with immigrant community members on a regular basis,
3. Use persuasive messages in their own languages, prioritizing the communication channels and formats they use.

If government communication strategies address Latinos’ biggest concerns and uplift and empower local leadership to combat them, they can increase vaccination uptake in their communities and help close the vaccination gap between underserved communities and the rest of the country.

Enhancing information channels should be paired with other strategies, including support for trusted community-based organizations and vaccination drives in underserved communities. And if done correctly as part of a strategy to decrease the harmful impacts of the pandemic, it can even increase overall trust in government for years to come.