Over 170 Neighbors Receive the First Dose of the COVID-19 Vaccine
Through partnerships with Project Unity and Catalyst Health Network, Brother Bill’s was able to offer our first day of COVID-19 Moderna vaccines to over 170 neighbors on Monday, April 19! Tents hosting volunteers, stored vaccines, and vaccine administration tools stood in our campus parking lot as cars lined up to receive the vaccine in a drive-thru format.
Our vaccine administration efforts are a continuation of Project Unity’s “Together We Vaccinate” program, a free community COVID-19 vaccination event. It accompanies “Together We Test”, a highly successful campaign that brought mass testing to thousands of under-served Dallas residents. According to the CDC, the percentage of white Americans who are fully vaccinated by far exceeds other ethnicity groups. 61.2% of fully vaccinated Americans are white, while 17.2% are Hispanic and 12.4% are Black. As a nonprofit primarily serving Hispanic and Black neighbors, our conviction is to provide equitable access to vaccines. This partnership allows us to collectively serve even more North Texas residents.
At Brother Bill’s, we’ve encountered two main factors in regards to our neighbors receiving the COVID-19 vaccine:
1. Neighbors have already been vaccinated.
This is good news! Anecdotally, at least 50% of Clinic patients have already received their vaccine. When we sent out a survey last month to gauge neighbors’ interest in receiving the vaccine at Brother Bill’s, nearly 1,000 people responded. Since then, families have taken advantage of vaccine sites in Dallas County like Fair Park. Over 6 million Texans (28% of the population) are fully vaccinated. That being said, on our first day of offering the vaccines, we filled 85% of our capacity for registrants within the first several hours.
2. Neighbors fear the stigma around the COVID-19 vaccine.
Misinformation, lack of Spanish translation,and the pandemic’s disproportionate health and economic impact on Black and Hispanic households have caused some mistrust surrounding the vaccine. We are honored to be a trusted source of information in the zip codes we serve. By providing education and offering the vaccine onsite, we can overcome much of the hesitancy our neighbors feel. “In the same way we wear seat belts, we take vaccines and we wear masks,” says Wes Keyes, Executive Director.
In addition to offering the second dose of this vaccine in the upcoming weeks, we also were recently approved by the Texas Department of State Health Services to administer 200 more vaccines. The date for that event is still pending, so stay tuned if you would like to register for the next vaccination event!