COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence in Geographic Areas of Need
August 25, 2021
On December 14, 2020, the first COVID-19 vaccine was administered under U.S. FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in the United States. Since then, 47% of the eligible U.S. population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and 55.2% have received at least one dose of a vaccine. Unfortunately, vaccine confidence and other roadblocks have continued to slow down vaccination efforts in the U.S. and endeavors to reaccelerate administration of doses have faced several challenges. Recently, the African American Research Collaborative (AARC) conducted a nationwide poll of the largest-yet sample of African American, Latinos, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans on how these communities are viewing the COVID-19 vaccines. The survey findings reveal that discrimination, location, and messaging continue to be factors that influence whether someone will choose to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. This briefing discussed the results of this survey, their importance, and explored potential strategies to increase vaccination rates, particularly ones tailored to different populations.
Speakers:
- Rhea Boyd, M.D., MPH, Pediatrician and Child Health Advocate, Palo Alto Medical Foundation
- Henry Fernandez, J.D., Chief Executive Officer, African American Research Collaborative
- Erin Hemlin, M.A., Director of Health Policy and Advocacy, Young Invincibles
- Lauren Rauh, MPH, Senior Program Manager, Convince USA
- Rachel Nuzum, MPH, Vice President, Federal and State Health Policy, Commonwealth Fund (moderator)
Presentation: COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence in Geographic Areas of Need
Event Resources
Key Resources
(listed chronologically, beginning with the most recent)
“American COVID-19 Vaccine Poll.” African American Research Collaborative. Available at http://allh.us/QwWT.
“The Room Where It Happens: The Role of Primary Care in the Next Phase of the COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign.” Klein, S., Hostetter, M. The Commonwealth Fund. July 7, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/P4EY.
“KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor: June 2021.” Hamel, L., Lopes, L., Kearney, A., et al. Kaiser Family Foundation. June 30, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/qkcK.
“Latest Data on COVID-19 Vaccinations by Race/Ethnicity.” Ndugga, N., Pham, O., Hill, L., et al. Kaiser Family Foundation. June 30, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/Yb3u.
“What Do Americans Think About Getting Vaccinated Against COVID-19?” Shah, A., Schneider, C., Zephyrin, L., et al. The Commonwealth Fund. June 16, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/E78D.
“‘It’s a Minefield’: COVID Vaccine Safety Poses Unique Communication Challenge.” Remmel, A. Nature. May 21, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/tqf4.
Additional Resources
(listed chronologically, beginning with the most recent)
“Vaccinate with Confidence: Strategy to Reinforce Confidence in COVID-19 Vaccines.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. August 19, 2021. Available here.
“Nationwide Survey Of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, And Pacific Islanders on COVID-19 Shows Disparities on Vaccinations and Struggles with Discrimination and Mental Health.” Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum. July 21, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/jf3D.
“On One Native American Reservation, Vaccine Hesitancy Has Long Historical Roots.” Stacke, S. The Nation. July 21, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/yX6T.
“Young Americans Aren’t Getting Vaccinated, Jeopardizing Covid-19 Fight.” Cooper, L., Siddiqui, S. The Wall Street Journal. July 11, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/QXPR.
“To Fight the Delta Variant, Better Understanding of Unvaccinated Americans is Critical.” Blumenthal, D., Fernandez, H. The Hill. July 2, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/eknU.
“Peer Pressure, Not Politics, May Matter Most When It Comes to Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine.” Cox, D. American Enterprise Institute. June 29, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/fB7E.
“Missing the Point — How Primary Care Can Overcome Covid-19 Vaccine ‘Hesitancy’” Ratzan, S., Schneider, E., Hatch, H., et al. The New England Journal of Medicine. June 24, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/Q9wR.
“Government Won’t Get Us Herd Immunity. Businesses Can.” Gotbaum, J. The Brookings Institution. May 3, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/4WHu.
“The Johnson and Johnson Vaccine Pause and the Challenge of Risk assessment.” Feuer, M. Brookings Institution. April 28, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/KVwh.
“‘It Didn’t Really Stick with Me’: Understanding the Rural Shrug Over Covid and Vaccines.” Tribble, S. Kaiser Health News. April 1, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/v3FC.
“Addressing Justified Vaccine Hesitancy in the Black Community.” Laurencin, C. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. March 30, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/jnda.
“How Public Health Officials Can Convince Those Reluctant to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine.” Badger, D., Haislmaier, E. The Heritage Foundation. March 26th, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/9Ypd.
“Vaccine Hesitancy in Rural Pediatric Primary Care.” Mical, R., Martin-Velez, J. Blackstone, T., Derouin, A. Journal of Pediatric Health Care. February 2021. Available at http://allh.us/wKVB.
“Vaccine Hesitancy Among Hispanic Adults.” Kearney A., Lopes, L., Brodie, M. Kaiser Family Foundation. January 14, 2021. Available at http://allh.us/Kvjq.
“Countering Vaccine Hesitancy.” Edwards, K., Hackell, J., Committee on Infectious Diseases, Committee on Practice and Ambulatory Medicine. Pediatrics. August 2016. Available at http://allh.us/wg8T.
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Experts
Speakers
Rhea Boyd, M.D., MPH
California Children’s Trust, Director of Equity and Justice
rhea@cachildrenstrust.org
Henry Fernandez, J.D.
African American Research Collaborative, CEO
henry@africanamericanresearch.us
Erin Hemlin, M.A.
Young Invincibles, Health Policy & Advocacy Director
erin.hemlin@younginvincibles.org
Lauren Rauh, MPH
Convince USA, Senior Program Manager
lauren.rauh@sph.cuny.edu
Experts and Analysts
Matt A. Barreto, Ph.D.
BSP Research, President and Co-Founder
barretom@ucla.edu
Gary G. Bennett, Ph.D.
Duke University, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Professor of Psychology & Nuerosceience, Global Health & Medicine
gary.bennett@duke.edu
Brent Orrell
American Enterprise Institute, Senior Fellow
jessie.wall@aei.org
Laurie Zephyrin, M.D., MPH, MBA
Commonwealth Fund, Vice President, Health System Equity
Lz@cmwf.org
Government
Kizzmekia S. Corbett, Ph.D., MPH
National Institute of Health, Coronavirus Vaccine Program, Research Fellow
kizzmekia.corbett@nih.hhs.gov
Jessica Schindelar, MPH
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Associate Director for Communications, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion
ghq1@cdc.gov
Abbigail Tumpey, MPH, CHES
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Associate Director for Communication, Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services
aws8@cdc.gov
Stakeholders
Todd Askew
American Medical Association, Senior Vice President, Advocacy
todd.askew@ama-assn.org
Matt Eyles, M.S.
America’s Health Insurance Plans, President and CEO
meyles@ahip.org
Claire Hannan
Association of Immunization Managers, Executive Director
channan@immunizationmanagers.org
Janet Hernandez
Made to Save, Deputy Director
janet.hernandez@civicnation.org
Mark Howell, J.D.
American Hospital Association, Senior Associate Director, Standards and Drug Policy
mhowell@aha.org
Heidi Larson, Ph.D
Vaccine Confidence Project, Founding Director
heidi.larson@LSHTM.ac.uk
Christi Mackie, MPH
Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, Vice President of Community Health and Prevention
cmackie@astho.org
Pamela Roberto, Ph.D., MPH
PhRMA, Deputy Vice President of Policy and Research
proberto@phrma.org
Kimberly Sharpe-Scott, MPH
National Association of County and City Health Officials, Senior Program Analyst, Immunization
ksharpe-scott@naccho.org
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Transcript
This is an unedited transcript.
0:05
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining today’s webinar, Jose 19, Facts: a Vaccine Confidence and Geographic Areas of Need. I am Kathryn Martucci, director of policy and Programs at the Alliance for Health Policy. For those of you who are not familiar with the Alliance, welcome, We are a non partisan resource for the policy community, and we’re dedicated to advancing knowledge and understanding of health policy issues.
0:33
The Alliance for Health Policy, gratefully acknowledges the Commonwealth Fund for supporting today’s webinar. And we’re grateful to have Rachel Nuzum who is Vice President for the Federal and State Health Policy Initiative at the assigned to moderate. And, I’ll go over some quick housekeeping notes and then turn it over to Rachel.
0:51
I want to remind everyone that you can join today’s conversation on Twitter, using the hashtag all health lies. And join our community at all health policy, as well as on Facebook and LinkedIn.
1:05
We also want you to be active participants in today’s conversation, so please get your questions ready.
1:11
You should see a dashboard on the right side of your web browser that has a speech bubble icon with a question mark.
1:18
You can use that speech bubble to submit questions you have for the panelists at any time. We’ll be collecting these and addressing them throughout the broadcast, And you can also chat any technical issues you may be experiencing there as well.
1:33
And please be sure to check out our website, all health policy dot org where you can find background materials, including a resource list, and export lists, and the recording of today’s webinar, and the slides will be there as well. So please be sure to check all those resources out. And with that, I will turn it over to Rachel. Thanks, Rachel.
1:59
Good morning. Thank you so much, Kathryn. I’m so pleased to join you all today on this critical topic.
2:06
I want to first acknowledge my fund colleagues Eric Schneider, Reggie Williams, Laurie Zephyrin and so many others at the fund who had been working diligently on Covert 19 issues during the entire pandemic.
2:17
Which full approval of the Pfizer vaccine by the FDA for those 16 and over. And the news that boosters for Vaccinated American may begin as soon as next month.
2:27
The US does on track to bolster our immunity and our ability to fight off the delta variant.
2:33
At the same time, we know that access to and acceptance of the vaccine or a booster is not uniform across the United States.
2:41
While estimates from the Yale School of Public Health have found that the effect donation efforts may have saved over 270,000 lives and prevented one point two million hospitalizations, many ICUS are once again at capacity with the third among largely unvaccinated Americans.
3:00
How do we reach those that remain unvaccinated? How do we target them messages to build confidence and answer questions rather than blame and shame?
3:09
What role does systemic racism play in this calculation? And what’s the responsibility of government, employers and families and helping to end the surge?
3:19
Finally, as summer nears its end and kids from pre K to college are all ready to head back to school. How do we ensure their safety?
3:26
These are just a few of the questions that we’re going to tackle in the next hour. And we’ve got just the right group assembled today to address these and many more.
3:34
First we’re going to start with Henry Fernandez, the Chief Executive Officer of the African american Research Collaborative and his own consulting firm, Fernandez Advisor. He also served as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC.
3:49
Henry is going to speak about a really critical survey that AARP and the Commonwealth Fund have partnered on, and we’re thrilled that, Henry, it could be here today.
4:00
I’m also pleased to Erin Hemlin has joined us today. She’s the Director of Health Policy and Advocacy at Young invincibles.
4:06
I’m currently leading their policy development and government relations work.
4:11
She focuses on the federal marketplace and Medicaid, as well as Young Adult Health Care utilization and with young adults being one of the highest proportion of unvaccinated Americans that we have in the country right now. We’re all going to be really focused and interested on what lessons Erin has in how to potentially reach them.
4:29
Next, I’m pleased to introduce doctor Rhea Boyd, doctor boys, a pediatrician, and the co developer of the conversation between us about a national campaign to share credible information about …
4:41
vaccines in Black and Latin, Hispanic communities across the US.
4:45
She also writes and teaches on the relationship between structural racism, inequities, and health, and as a pediatrician, I know we’re all going to have a lot of questions, especially for doctor Boyd today.
4:56
Finally, we’ll end with doctor. Sorry, Lauren Rauh. Lauren is the senior program manager and research co-ordinator at the Convince USA initiatives, based at the City University of New York School of Public Health and Policy.
5:09
She designs co-ordinates and conducts research and programmatic activity to identify and mitigate concerns about vaccination.
5:17
Her team has been engaged in projects that explore strategies for rebuilding trust in institutions, systems, and information. And we need all of that today. So, we’re going to launch today’s discussion hearing from Henry, who’s going to give some insight into the current vaccine confidence and disparities in vaccination rates, drawing from the survey. So, Henry, I’ll turn it over to you. Thanks so much.
5:45
Thank you. I’m going to but thanks for having me. I’m going to take about five minutes to talk about our poll, which Rachel discussed, and show you an online tool we built.
5:59
So you can use our findings from this research in your local work.
6:06
The American Covid-19 Vaccine Poll is the largest all of its kind that has been done to understand who is unvaccinated, why, and what could motivate them to get vaccinated.
6:18
The poll was done by a RC in partnership with the Commonwealth Fund. We’re also supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The WK Kellogg Foundation.
6:29
To complete this poll, we built a diverse team of experts in vaccines, health equity, and public health from both community outreach organizations, but also for research universities, including UCLA, Yale, Penn State, University of Maryland, and The University of New Mexico.
6:50
We surveyed over 12,000 people using telephones, both cell cell phones and landlines. As well as online polling, we wanted to capture the broadest range of of Americans in the way that they want to be communicated with. We over sampled African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders and Native Americans. It’s probably one of the largest polls done in the last few years as Native Americans on any topic.
7:21
We also had a very large sample of White Americans.
7:25
We then re weighted this to match their appropriate size based on the Census.
7:30
We pulled Americans, in May, and June, as vaccines were available to everyone.
7:36
And both barriers and hesitancy began to impact the rate of vaccine uptake. The size of this poll allows us to look at different groups with a high level of accuracy. It also importantly for this conversation allows us to look at both vaccinated and unvaccinated people within each of the subgroups.
7:57
So, now, let’s turn to the website that you can use after this poll.
8:01
And, I’m going to say that this is always the moment where you worry whether or not the technology will work, So let’s give it a shot here.
8:10
So, hopefully, now, I am sharing the website, and folks can see it, and if you can’t, somebody chat me to say it’s not working.
8:22
So, ah.
8:25
The website that all of you can use, the time, is …, vaccine poll dot com. So, …
8:31
vaccine pull dot com, it allows you to look at specific groups, to see how hesitant they are, and what their concerns are. So, what leads them to that hesitancy?
8:45
And what could motivate them to get vaccinated, the top of the website?
8:50
So, really what you see here on, on your screens, gives you a visual representation of hesitancy and barriers to access across different racial and ethnic groups, gender groups, party ID, income, education, those sorts of categories. I’m not gonna spend much time there, You can kinda just take a look at it.
9:12
What I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna scroll down to the Explore the Data section, and specifically to this section that allows for the use of filters.
9:23
Um, this will allow you to dig into the data and get what you need for the groups that you’re most interested in, or that you’re working with.
9:32
On the left of the screen, here, we have a set of filters with no filters on. For instance, we can see the percentage of Americans who are hesitant to get vaccinated. So that’s right up here that I don’t know if you could see my pointer or not. I’m so zoom centric. So at the top of the screen, how hesitant or the 37% hesitant, 63%, not hesitant.
9:59
And we can choose different groups and see how hesitant they are, for instance, in comparison.
10:05
So let’s see the difference, for instance, between 18 to 34 year olds, so we’ll go here to age group.
10:14
And we can see that hesitancy really jumps up for younger Americans.
10:20
And we can compare that, so much lower levels of hesitancy.
10:26
four for older Americans, the 60 plus population. So again, 60 plus.
10:34
And now we’re looking at 18 to 34 year olds.
10:38
Now let’s look at what concerns people have about getting vaccinated.
10:43
So if we slide down here, we’re going to clear the clear our filters.
10:49
And we can look at the biggest concerns among the unvaccinated.
10:53
What we’ll see is that, with no filters on the number one concern across all groups is about the Johnson and Johnson vaccine causing blood clots.
11:05
You can also see, so that’s this kind of first one here.
11:08
and if I, if you scroll over it, you’ll see that you can actually see the question that we asked, and was the Johnson and Johnson curve at 19 vaccine is dangerous and can create blood clots. That was 1 of 31 concerns that we tested, it tested number one. It tested number one across all all groups of folks.
11:27
Without regard to age, race, or ethnicity, who they voted for for president, this was the number-one
concern.
11:36
We can now, see differences, For instance. Let’s look at differences between based on race.
11:44
And what we can see is, when we look at white folks, for instance, the number two reason that white folks, white people are concerned are the biggest, the second biggest concern for them is that they believe it is my right, to choose to not take the … vaccine if I decide it is not the best thing for me or my family. So for more than a third of white people, they’re hesitant is a function of this belief.
12:18
But if we switch to African Americans, we will see that that is no longer, that is not even in the top five as concerns, instead.
12:30
A second Johnson and Johnson issue, which is, we describe this way, based on their history with talcum powder and other products, I do not trust Johnson and Johnson to make a safe … vaccine. And this relates to concerns about J&J, selling of talcum powder and its potential connection to cancer.
12:50
That’s actually more influential in making unvaccinated african americans untrusting of all vaccines, not just the J&J vaccine.
12:58
You can also see that for African Americans, Trump rushed on Cruz and vaccines was a major issue.
13:05
I do want to just take one quick look for those folks who are particularly interested in the Latino community, and if we look at Latinos, and we look at this hesitancy score, it’s just slightly ahead of where all Americans are in terms of levels of hesitancy.
13:26
But this actually, inside this group, there are some very big differences. And so, if we look at US.
13:34
Born Latinos, you’ll see that the hesitancy level is quite high.
13:41
And particularly, when compared, two non US born Latinos Latinas, coming from another country. And so that should be considered. You could use this tool To understand things like that that should be considered with messaging to Latinos that they’re actually and we see the same thing on English dominant or Spanish dominant Latinos.
14:03
All right, now, let’s look at what concerns.
14:06
Uh, yeah, I’m sorry. Let’s let’s look at what we can do about those concerns that people have about getting vaccinated.
14:15
And so what we’ll see is that the numb that the there we’re going to do is take a look at messages and messengers for the unvaccinated. So now we’re only going to look at the unvaccinated populations. The message that test best across all groups of unvaccinated people is that getting a curve at 19 vaccine to protect the lives of my family. And those I love.
14:43
This is true for even the most hesitant groups.
14:46
It, well, it works well, for instance, with people ages 18 to 34, and works well with, we’ll see here that it’s works well.
14:56
With rural Americans, which is another big hesitant group.
15:01
Other messages that work well include those, that also center others, like the impact on local businesses and workers and impacts on children, losing parents, and the ability to get back together in family events.
15:19
All the center loves and doing for others, and I’m happy to talk more in Q and A about that.
15:26
Finally, let’s look at who are the most effective messengers and, and, and where people want to get vaccinated, They want to get information first and foremost from their personal physician, but they also trust key experts with local expertise.
15:45
And you can see that in the most effective messengers, boxes, friends, friends and family who have taken the vaccine are also quite convincing for the unvaccinated.
15:57
If we now switch down here to preferred vaccination sites, and I should say, that, this my personal doctor, primary care physician, that’s, again, number one, for all groups. We will see some real differences there around race, with regard to trust in federal government, CDC, For instance. Much higher among African Americans than among whites preferred vaccination sites.
16:25
And here, again, people want to get vaccinated at the same doctor that they have the highest level of trust for and it’s not really close. So, my doctor’s office is the place that people want to get vaccinated and is the number one. Number one, choice, let me just do two quick things.
16:51
Then boosters and mandates regarding schools, we have a lot of work to do to educate the public about booster’s.
16:59
All about 45% of Americans would take a booster, um, 30% don’t know. We see high level of uncertainty among all racial groups and high levels of opposition to boosters. In the same groups that we see hesitancy problems with generally including rural Americans and Trump voters on requiring vaccines for teachers and school staff. This is actually quite popular. Almost two thirds of Americans support mandating vaccines for church teachers and staff, with only about 17% opposing, is quite different, of course, and withdrawals. The most attention in the media, even among Trump voters, a slim majority support this particular mandate. Mandating student student vaccines is less popular, but still the majority of Americans support it. Again, you can play with the data yourselves to match the populations you’re working with to understand what their concerns most likely are, What can help move them towards vaccination. Just go to vaccine olt dot com. And I’ll stop. Stop there.
18:01
Thanks so much, Henry. I’m just a quick follow up question, given the announcement in the full approval this week of the.
18:13
Rachel, you went for me?
18:16
Sorry.
18:20
You’re still on mute for me?
18:25
OK, can you hear me?
18:27
Yes.
18:28
Thanks so much, Henry.
18:29
I was just wondering if there was anything in your findings that seem to suggest that a full approval, much like we saw this week by FDA of the Pfizer vaccine, could potentially shift, you know, folks that might otherwise have been hesitant while it was under the Emergency Use Authorization.
18:51
Yeah. We didn’t see that as something that was really motivating people. What we did see was actually that mandates, which I think is kind of what’s going to come with that, that more companies, for instance, more governments are going to be willing to require vaccines, that that actually we saw some pretty positive uptake that about a third of the unvaccinated said just even a request from their employer would lead them to get vaccinated. We also saw that financial incentives, which are not talking about it in terms of financial incentives. But larger financial incentives actually had quite a significant impact with more than half of the unvaccinated saying that they would take it.
19:32
And so I think that there’s probably no more significant financial incentive then the loss of a job. And so I don’t know that the, the, the approval will make a big difference for individuals.
19:45
But I think that its impact on mandates likely will have a big impact, in that people will take it when they’re, when required by their job.
19:55
Great. Thank you so much. That’s a perfect, perfect segue to Erin Hemlin from Young Invincibles though, Erin, if you could join us.
20:05
And give us your sense of how young adults are, are viewing these vaccinations, and the thoughts you might have and research that you’ve done on the population. Thanks so much.
20:20
Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
20:23
It’s great to be here. Again, my name is Erin Hemlin and the Director of Health Policy and Advocacy for Young Invincibles. And if you’re not familiar with why I Young Invincibles is International non-profit, advocacy organization, dedicated to enhancing economic opportunity for young adults. What issue that we work on is increasing access to health care. By doing that, we’ve been doing kind of outreach best practices to young adults over the last 10 years to help them sign up for health coverage. And, we felt that that was a really great body of work that would serve as well into helping young people get vaccinated, both with understanding, answering their questions, and motivating them to go ahead and get the vaccine.
21:02
OK, we can go ahead to the next slide.
21:06
OK, great, so, to talk a little bit about the specific project, we started what we call a Listening Tour. So, Focus groups or facilitated discussions with young adults between 18 and 34. They ran from about April to late June and early July. So, again, right around that timeframe where young people of all 18 and up, or becoming eligible for the vaccine, and the rollout was really getting heavy across the country, and we asked about their opinions here, motivations about the vaccine, to try to get them and not real good qualitative data to match some of the data that others like Henry had been doing out through polling in the field. Second page of this campaign, which is really ramping up this fall, is using some of that data that we’ve learned to do peer to peer outreach through our network of young adults, and share some of the top messaging and outreach best practices that we’ve identified through these conversations.
22:01
Next slide, please.
22:05
OK, so to show a little bit of the breakdown of the demographics of young adults that we spoke with, again, they were all between 18 and 34, but tend to lean a little bit towards that younger age, median age of about 24. It was a pretty diverse group, which we’re very excited about, was something that we are striving for it to really reach. Young people of color, primarily, they are about 38% black young adults. 22% identified as latin X or Hispanic, 15% Asian, and 11% non hispanic white, A few who identified as multiple races.
22:36
And if you’ve identified as indigenous or Middle Eastern, skews pretty heavily female and also had a pretty high percentage, they identified within the LGBT community as well, of the whole folks that we talked to you, about 85 young adults total, About three quarters reported that they were already vaccinated by the time of the discussion being held.
22:56
And about a quarter were not vaccinated among those that were not vaccinated, We had about 66%. that said that they probably or definitely would come back in a little about 35%. That said probably or definitely not vaccinated.
23:13
Next slide, please.
23:16
OK, so to dive into a little bit of what we heard, I think it really does compliment a lot of what we just heard from Henry presentation. But by far, the most common thing we heard from both folks that said that they had already been vaccinated as well as those that were unvaccinated. And waiting with a lot of misinformation, misinformation, confusion, skepticism really made up the kind of primary questions concerns that We heard from young adults about the koeppen vaccine misinformation about whether or not young adults really needed to get vaccinated confusion, about what was in it, how it was developed overall. Skepticism about the motivations behind the vaccine development and behind kind of government, distrust.
23:58
In general, of the folks who were already vaccinated by far the top motivation. Which protect others in their community, especially, it helps to kind of enthusiastically and, in fact, that it helps you got vaccinated as soon as they possibly could. However, that feeds also kind of feed into some of the misinformation about whether or not young people actually needed it for their own health.
24:21
We heard from quite a few people that they got vaccinated as soon as they could because they needed to protect somebody in their family. A lot of folks living in multi-generational homes. You had a parent or a grandparent who was at high risk who’s more vulnerable to Kobe that they wanted to protect, but also to seem to be saying at the same time that they didn’t actually believe they needed it for their own health as much as they wanted to protect others.
24:46
The folks who are not vaccinated, the top concerns in addition to misinformation really wise concerns over side effects.
24:54
There were, especially in April, and May we heard a lot of reports that folks you have that kind of overblown report of how bad or how severe side effects could be. And that was a huge for offer young, young people for a variety of reasons, some of which were very, very practical. Such as having submit time off work. A lot of the young adult that we talk to, you talked about not having the types of jobs that we’re offering, paid time off. A lot of gig workers. For example, there’s a quote in here from someone who is working as A Nanny. Who said, If I had to skip one ship network, that could mean missing $80 that month? And that can be the difference, that can be able to pay my rent for the month or not.
25:31
And again, addition, there are some who believe that the side effects themselves were, in fact Worse Than coven. And pointed to other young people they knew who got liquid coded. But had pretty mild symptoms, or no symptoms at all, whereas they were hearing from folks who were getting vaccinated, who are getting sick.
25:48
Maybe once or even 20, after getting the shot vaccine, and felt that, it was no better rationale, essentially, to risk potentially getting coven. And maybe, not having any symptoms, versus getting the vaccine. And definitely having side effects. And maybe having come this time off work for that. Should I was one of the things within that area. one of the huge things, that we heard, a fear of side effects, and overall kind of misinformation and confusion about the vaccine itself.
26:17
Amongst some of the young people of color in our, our our focus groups, and they really were higher levels of skepticism of both kind of distrust of government, and just check that the medical system in general, and often tend to bring up preferring either holistic remedies to any illness at all or believing that natural immunity or building a sense of natural immunity would be a better way of getting vaccinated.
26:42
Next slide, please.
26:45
OK, so, to dive a little bit further into some of the access barriers, that came up, quite often during these discussions, again, the top by far, with a combination of confusion and misinformation. So, conspiracy theories within that as well as the fear that came up more often than you think, it might given, how much, I think there’s been a lot of advertising about the fact that the vaccines are free. They are free, across the board, but they’re kind of distrust of that information. That they didn’t believe it would actually be free, or they would actually free for everyone. Maybe for some folks, but not everyone.
27:18
Transportation came up quite a bit as well, especially talking about getting the two … or Pfizer Vaccine versus Johnson and Johnson.
27:26
Again, at Henry said there was a lot of skepticism in our focus groups about the Johnson and Johnson shot, especially after the first few reports about blood clots and after the pause, young, adults were very weary of Johnson and Johnson. However, pointed to the inconvenience of having to get the shot vaccine.
27:45
We had one young adult who said that they didn’t have a car, that the only vaccine appointment they could get as far away with not only being able to make sure that they were afraid, they had to find somebody else who was free twice in order to find a ride, to go get vaccinated twice, in addition to taking that time off work. So, really showing you that, that could be just a huge barrier.
28:06
Language access also came up quite a bit in a way that I think it’s a little bit interesting with a young adult population. Some folks pointed to language Access who were not native English speakers, but also folks who were native English speakers, But had family members who worked. So we had one woman, for example, who talked about her, her dad as a primarily spanish speaking individual, and needing to translate information to him and not being able to find enough Spanish related materials at the time. And just didn’t feel confident to be able to share what you need to know in Spanish, because of the information that she was getting really showing it. That could be a barrier for the larger household and the young adult kind of taking on that process of having to navigate that complicated system.
28:48
Next slide, please.
28:55
So, again, our focus groups ran through about the end of June. So, as before, some of the latest information that we’ve seen about mandates coming out. But we also found some pretty interesting findings. And again, I think that the question that Rachel Henry at the end of his presentation really resonated with the young people that we spoke with as well in a way that we found kind of surprising. At that point, before, we had some of the larger mandates coming out from state employees in the Veterans Affairs department, etcetera. The colleges and universities really had started to issue some mandates for the upcoming fall semester as well as some employers. Fret my workers.
29:32
And we saw similar to what Henry said, we saw a lot of young people who were not at all at first, and then talk to some degree hit, that they were kind of waiting for somebody to require it in order to get vaccinated.
29:44
For example, we had one young woman in a focus group who said that she, as a frontline worker, was offered the vaccine pretty early on in distribution of vaccines, but didn’t get it. She said she was unsure.
29:56
She didn’t know, didn’t feel like she had time to do research about what was in the vaccine, and a little bit scared ended up canceling her appointment and didn’t need it at that point later on a few months later. Her school is now requiring footfall and that’s motivated her to get vaccinated. And she was totally fine with that. I’m sure that was a little bit of a combination of more and more folks getting vaccinated, more people, but she knew was vaccinated, and that’s a little bit more comfortable. But it really seems to be something that was not at all a negative for young people, if anything, media positive.
30:27
And it was requiring folks to get vaccinated, mostly from, again, college at the University, employers. But we also heard from some folks that felt like, for social reasons, once it was required, than they were going to go ahead and get vaccinated. We had somebody who say, well, I heard you have to be evacuated to travel. I want to travel. So women got it, and literally the only reason why I did.
30:46
So that kind of requirement or, you know, really heavy encouragement seems to be really resonating with young people.
30:54
And then lastly, just when we’re thinking about boosters, and I know it’s still pretty early on early when we asked the question about it. But when we ask young people about the idea of potentially needing a booster shot in the future in, the atom really plummeted across the board. Even among folks who got vaccinated early on, you felt comfortable getting vaccinated in the beginning, the idea of having to do it annually or on some kind of ongoing basis just did not seem to appeal. It seemed to kind of compare it to the flu shot in the way that they’re like, well, if it becomes a little bit more normal, maybe that means I don’t actually need it. And it’s where people who are older, who are at higher risk, but not for me.
31:32
So, we see that as a real opportunity for needing to do some outreach coming in the fall and into the next year, as well.
31:41
Next slide.
31:44
And I’ll just touch on very briefly. We have all this. And I’ve written a report that will be out and about a week. And then we will also be re starting out these focus group discussions in the fall. Focusing in on folks who are still young adults who are still unvaccinated as well as some folks who have been enacted, who’ve been doing some outreach to their peers as well.
32:04
And issued another report later on this year, which I think will give us some really good, kind of ongoing data, what we’re hearing from young adults, and with that, I will turn it back over to you, Rachel.
32:16
Thank you so much, Aaron. And Aaron, just a clarifying question for you.
32:22
Henry made the comment about the importance of primary care providers as trusted messengers and even as preferred sites for vaccination.
32:32
And one of the things that was really striking when when we talked was, um, you know, how that may or may not resonate with young adults.
32:41
So, I was wondering if you just say something about this population.
32:45
How connected or disconnected are they from the health care system, and is it possible that there’s a link there with, you know, willingness to think of this as an ongoing medical treatment that you might have to do regularly with a booster?
33:03
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question.
33:06
We do see, I think, young people tend to be less connected to the healthcare system, in general, tend to not have a primary care provider, especially young men. Young women tend to have higher rates of ongoing care for reproductive care and things like that. However, I think you’re right. Like, we, we, we asked about convenience. It really is finding young people where they are. I think pharmacies, CDS minute clinics in that type of access healthcare points seem to really resonate. And when we asked what would be the most convenient place to get the vaccine, they pointed to grocery stores and pharmacies. In a way they think it’s interesting, Because at that point, vaccines were widely available at grocery stores and pharmacies, but they seem to not know that. Or at least if there’s miscommunication on on how the advertising was reaching the population we’re trying to reach.
33:55
And so I definitely think that there’s an opportunity to try to bridge that relationship, primary care providers. But for right now, I think getting that initial shot, it is going through their sighted employment, and going to college and universities and trying to bring it to them as much as you possibly can.
34:11
Great. Thank you so much.
34:13
Next, we’re going to turn to doctor Rhea Boyd. Rhea when you’re ready. Take it away.
34:23
Yeah.
34:26
Give me one second.
34:27
I’m just gonna use my screen.
34:35
All right.
34:37
OK, thanks so much for having me today. So I’m going to talk as a pediatrician about what I know about what’s happening with the national vaccination effort and kids across the country.
34:46
And I’m also going to talk with the hat on, as somebody who’s been talking tech news of color throughout the vaccination distribution effort about vaccines who understands a bit about why folks may not be vaccinated in our communities. So the first thing I’ll say is this is not a pandemic of the unvaccinated, what we really exposed during the vaccination distribution ever. It’s just how unequal the United States is. This is a map from the New York Times. It shows how unequal distribution of vaccines are, even just across states in this country. And you can see the areas that are lighter in color, or areas that don’t have as great of access to the vaccines. And we see that that is particularly true for the US.
35:27
If we then look at areas where we see current surge as a coven, we see that it’s again worst in the areas where we see vaccination rates are the lowest, which is again, the US.
35:36
The same holds true for where there are hospitalizations. Again, this is data from the New York Times, as of yesterday.
35:43
So then if we look where the communities that we’ve been working with live, black folks and latin X folks, they predominantly live in the US South. This is a map from Kaiser Family Foundation, and anywhere on the map, or it’s darker areas, where black folks disproportionately live in the country.
35:58
The same is true for latin X folks who disproportionately live in the south-west.
36:04
And so then what else do we now lives in the south. We also know this is an area of the country where access to insurance is not evenly distributed, because these are states who have disproportionately even less likely to expand Medicaid. So what that means is now 97% of adults in this country who live in the coverage gap, which means their income, is too high to qualify for Medicaid, but too low to be eligible for the marketplace premium tax credits. Those folks who then just simply lack coverage, mostly live in the south. And if you divide that up on the left here, by states, we see that they mostly live in states like, Texas and Florida, which states are, we’re all seeing surges and where we’re seeing lower rates of vaccination.
36:49
And so where do people want to go when they want to talk about getting the vaccine?
36:55
They want to go to a health care provider. But, where in the country are you less likely to have access to a regular provider, because you don’t have insurance, the sap.
37:04
This is data from Kaiser Family Foundation, Vaccine Monitor. They’re one of our leading partners for the conversation, the campaign that we’ve had around vaccinations, and so, on the left here, these are just locations where people would like to go. And I just put a star, because the top four locations, or places where people would go and regularly be comfortable going. If you had health insurance.
37:23
On the right here, as we think about vaccination for children, we also see that the folks that people want to talk to you about the vaccine, including parents, are doctors.
37:31
Again, that means you probably need a relationship with a doctor, which means you probably need to have preexisting insurance to either have that relationship be covered and longitudinal. And build up trust over time, Or to have familiarity with the process that it takes to, just to obtain medical care or advice about something like a vaccination or a medical procedure.
37:53
And so when we look across the country, this is data from the CDC, as of yesterday, If we look across the country, we see that black and latin X folks are the least likely vaccinated. So they’re the lowest lines on these curves to have at least one dose or to be fully vaccinated.
38:06
And then I put a little box just around their numbers there. So, if the entire United States now has just above 50% of folks who are fully vaccinated, for black box only, about a quarter of black folks are vaccinated in this country, and just over a third of Latin nexstar, Hispanic dogs are vaccinated.
38:24
If we look by age, we see across the board, again, this is data from the CDC, that as folks increase in age, their vaccination rates increase. This likely is reflective of the prioritization that elderly populations had in our distribution of the vaccine rollout, such that they were prioritize first to receive vaccines, and vaccines were approved for them first.
38:45
And so we see less among kids who are aged 12 to 17 and obviously, because it’s not yet approved for kids who are under 12 there, unvaccinated at this point, This is data from the American Academy of Pediatrics, and which I am a proud member.
39:00
And what it shows is that because we have children who are on vaccinated every time we have a surgeon coded and this is looking over time. so that middle surge are the dates that were in the winter and December and January. And on the right, this peak that is now approximating that surge we saw back when we all went into shutdowns across much of the country, we are now approximating that peak for children again right now.
39:25
If we then compare children to adults, we see that they tend to follow the same searches. So when people say that children aren’t affected by calvet, that simply is not true. Every time we see a search for adults, we also have seen a corresponding search for children.
39:39
And although I want to show you this data today, early data has shown us that the kids who have the most complications from those who are most likely to be hospitalized, to have multi inflammatory syndrome that rare serious complication of coven.
39:52
And to die of cold it will predominantly black and latin X, more than 75% of early cases of covert deaths, hospitalizations, and multi inflammatory syndrome, and children on mask, or in children of color. Children are affected, and children of color are disproportionately affected.
40:11
And so then, what our parents thinking about vaccination. This is, again, data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, who just released a parenting poll a couple of weeks back.
40:19
And what we see is that on average, about 60% of parents say that they are going to be vaccinating their children. But when you talk about folks who are not vaccinated, excuse me, these are 60% of parents are already vaccinated themselves. So which parents aren’t even vaccinated, the parents who are younger, 18 to 39, that the parents who are disproportionately more likely to be the working poor, whose income is less than $40,000. They are disproportionately more likely to be black. And they’re disproportionately more likely to be Republican. So. if we’re thinking about parents vaccination as an indicator of if they might vaccinate their children, these are the groups we have to focus on, young folks who are the working poor, who are folks of color.
41:01
When we talk to folks of color, who are parents, they tend to cite access barriers as a main reason why they’re concerned about vaccination. And I put a star by some of the ones that we’ve heard in the media that we should also consider in our conversation today. People are worried about having to take time off, work. They’re worried that they won’t be able to get the vaccine from a place they trust. Remember what we said about insurance and access to a regular provider? They’re worried they might have to pay out of pocket for the vaccination and what the cost might be. Here, I just want to take a small pause. When people talk about cost of vaccination. It’s not that they don’t know. The vaccine is free at this point. People know, it’s free. It’s that obtaining healthcare in this country has never been cost neutral. Getting to that vaccination site requires gas in your tank. It requires bus. It might require a parking fee if you go to a public site in the community, right. Getting to and from healthcare always cost money. And that is a concern for people who are low income.
41:57
And we’ve seen that people who are low-income are more likely to be disproportionately unvaccinated.
42:02
And they also worry about the transportation costs.
42:05
The top concerns we see for parents across racial and ethnic groups, and for children, which I’ll show you, is about long term side effects, and we can talk about that at the end.
42:14
Again, let me think about access barriers, again, across racial and ethnic groups. One in four parents of the children who are between ages 12 and 17, who are not vaccinated, say if their employer provided paid time off, they’d be more likely to get vaccinated. They also would be more likely to get vaccinated if they had free transportation, and if their medical provider could come to their workplace to do it again, to have a medical provider, you need to have insurance.
42:40
Higher income, parents are more likely to have access to vaccine information. So, we are also facing an information gap in communities that mirrors the health literacy gap that has existed in this country For decades, if not centuries at this point, or people who have access to resources and healthcare tend to have access to credible information about health and other communities do not. On top of that Information Gap, we are obviously also facing a disinformation campaign that’s targeting communities of color, particularly black folks, since the beginning of the vaccine rollout.
43:10
And so, to know that if your school is a richer school, you might have that information, says that we also need to reach out to parents, who go to schools that are in low-income communities to make sure they also have access to this information. And I just highlighted that these are also schools where they’re encouraging parents to get vaccinated. So, instead of not having the question or assuming people are taking care of it with medical providers, they may or may not have. If you go to a school where it’s encouraged. Parents are more likely to be vaccinated.
43:38
We see the same for other vaccines.
43:40
Again, if we look at the concerns of children that they’ve expressed to their parents between ages 12 and 17, their main concern for those who are vaccinated side effects, I wanted to highlight this, because when we do our outreach, we have increasing numbers of folks who are already vaccinated come to our open calls. So, we will talk to thousands of people, at a time, across the south, and 50 to 60% of those on the line. Because we do polls at the beginning of our calls, will already have a vaccination.
44:12
That tells us that we have not done a good enough information campaign to even educate those who have already received a campaign, who’ve already received a vaccine, excuse me, about what they can expect.
44:23
And so we see this bubbling up for children, they’re parents are already vaccinated, They’re vaccinated themselves, and yet they still have top concerns about side effects. That needs to be addressed. And the best place to address that is what the provider you have a relationship with.
44:36
And so we’ve developed the conversation. I welcome anybody to use our materials.
44:40
We feature black and latin X, doctors, nurses, Promotoras, community health workers. Our website is WWW dot between us, about us dot org. Our information is free to use. It’s available in English and Spanish.
44:54
In addition to having our digital campaign to combat digital disinformation, we have been hitting the ground hard in partnership with health departments with community based organizations, with churches with organizations that are incredible.
45:06
Like their account that did all of the wonderful work, so that we had the accurate census that we just got, to make sure that we’re reaching out to folks who are in the hardest hit communities. And our particular outreach right now is focusing on the US South.
45:19
Because I’ll just say our Nations vaccinate unvaccinated are not a monstrous monolith.
45:24
This is not a group who is adverse to science or medical care.
45:28
We have seen that this is a group who was more likely to be our nation’s working for. And more likely to lack the resources to actually access any type of health care, let alone a vaccination.
45:39
And so if we’re going to vaccinate them, we have to talk about what we’re going to do to address access barriers, both to the vaccines and other types of medical care, but also to information about vaccines.
45:50
Some of the things that we could go over, that we’ll go over more, I think, in our second session, and I’ve written extensively about, but most recently, in the nation last week, is that we need to talk about the access barriers to general medical care. Because we are now coming up against those barriers, as we try to vaccinate people, we need to talk about universal childcare. So that the cost of vaccination truly is free for folks need to talk about paid sick leave. Because again, folks have identified that if their employer had it, they’d be more likely to get vaccinated.
46:17
We need to acknowledge that this information is rarely behind a paywall. The Credible Science often is, and so we need to make sure that it particularly around coven, and Health, in General, that we provide free access to everybody to have that information online and in their community.
46:32
And then, obviously, we need to invest in the rest of the socials, rest of the social safety net so that folks can incur a bit of cost to receive these levels of care.
46:42
So, again, please check us out at the conversation.
46:44
All of our information is free to download and use without any permission.
46:49
So, thank you. I will stop there and turn it back over.
46:53
Thank you so much, doctor Boyd, that was terrific.
46:55
And we had a question from the audience that I was going to ask you with a clarifying question, and they asked, what advice do you have to journalists that are continuing to, you know, highlight and focus and address the topic? And the question was how do you, how should they be writing about hesitancy? And you almost sort of answered it with your last couple of slides.
47:16
And that is, you know, really stressing what some of those real barriers are.
47:21
But I wanted to give you the opportunity to, to answer that question for yourself, Because we know how much of a story this is. And that that’s where a lot of families are getting information. So what would your advice be to folks who are actually writing these articles and kind of helping to frame public opinion on them?
47:43
To be frank, stop using the term Hesitancies stop talking about it.
47:47
People don’t have a kind of a morphis, um, hesitation or reluctance to get vaccinated or to receive medical care. Most of those who are unvaccinated in our country are not anti vaccine. That is a tiny minority of the folks who are not unvaccinated. Just consider our nation’s children for one, right? That obviously blows open the idea that the folks who are unvaccinated just hate medical care and vaccines. Many of them are our nation’s children. So, if they’re not going to talk about hesitancy, it means you have to do the extra work to actually understand why folks aren’t vaccinated. Go to them. Reach out to us. We would be we would welcome you to come to some of our events so that you can hear the legitimate concerns people have. When we talk to communities of color in the South, people will get on this line. It’s like calling up the radio.
48:35
They will tell us their name, where they live, what medical conditions they have, an ask an incredibly specific question about whether the vaccine is safe for them in the context of their medical history and their local region. That tells me, you don’t have a provider to ask that question, too. I’m delighted to be that provider. But that is a gap. Our health care system is made based on, you know, the insurance system that funds our healthcare system, that we have to now address. And so, I think journalists have to take more responsibility and actually getting to know the barriers that people are actually facing. Instead of just painting everybody with a broad brush and saying that you are an anti vax or So, we should have separate stories that culpable anti vaccine because there are people who are averse to vaccination. And then, real stories about communities of color, who actually have a long face barriers to all manners of healthcare in this country.
49:24
That’s great. Thank you so much.
49:25
And, really, that’s a theme, I think, that we’ve heard from the Henry and his ability and his survey results, to really be able to look into different portions of the community and the population to really understand what some of their concerns are. And also heard that from, from Erin, as well. And, Lauren, I know you are up next.
49:46
And you’re going to help us really think through what this idea of personalized messaging and thinking through how important those messages are for who you’re trying to reach, and how that particularly might relate to the mandate conversation. So, with that, I will turn it over to you, Lauren. Thank you.
50:06
Great. Great, Thank you for having me.
50:08
So, I’m, I wish to build a pilot, my fellow panelists, to share thus far and shift the discussion a bit to communication guidance for vaccination policies. Based on findings from a series of in-depth interviews conducted by a team at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health last spring where we focused on examining trust as a determinant of vaccine acceptance.
50:29
Next slide, please.
50:32
So, quickly, how our mandate is currently being experienced. There are two types of mandates.
50:38
one includes weekly testing as an alternative to vaccination. The other does not.
50:43
There’s increasing public support for employer based mandates, and this may continue to rise, as Henry mentioned. And you can see some recent data here. There’s some variability depending on the poll.
50:55
But, there is a precedent for mandates increasing vaccine uptake.
50:59
That being said, mandate should be seen as a piece of a larger strategy. I hope to discuss here to help unvaccinated individuals get on the ramp to acceptance, especially because we are talking about individuals who may have very high levels of distrust and disenfranchisement. So, mandates alone may not be the only nor the most empathetic route.
51:21
Next slide, please.
51:24
This has been covered already by my fellow panelists. Who are the unvaccinated right now. But, quickly, we can think about them in two camps.
51:33
People with unmitigated barriers, which means their concerns and questions haven’t been answered or they’re experiencing, and, or they’re experiencing access issues. And then, there’s also people who say, they will not get the vaccine, And in our qualitative research, we thought that these individuals often cited concerns over chronic health conditions, but this is also the cap where you see some partisan bent to vaccination.
51:57
Then, where do the unvaccinated work?
52:00
They don’t work in one employment sector.
52:02
That being said, the vaccination rate across the United States tends to be lower among low-income people, and people of color are also likely to be frontline and essential workers. And individual individuals at the front lines we have to remember, are exposed to the same chaotic information environment, and highly politicized rhetoric that the rest of us are.
52:24
In our interviews, most individuals were essential workers.
52:27
And paradoxically, their ability to face the pandemic head on and survive meant that the vaccine was seen as a kind of unnecessary risk. They were able to protect themselves with PPE and other mitigating measures.
52:42
So please, next slide.
52:45
And just quickly, some other key perspective, sort of lay the groundwork here from our interviewees, most of them. And these are all unvaccinated individuals they did take the pandemic very seriously and they thought science based information. But they were constantly navigating exposure to misinformation. And that really caused this environment where they were struggling with chaotic information and really having a clear, risk benefit analysis.
53:11
Next slide, please.
53:15
They voice distrust in the vaccine and vaccine information is really stemming from the contradictory information, causing confusion, and anxiety, and also really not seeing their priorities reflected in the messaging. They’re receiving joblessness childcare.
53:31
And their children’s struggling with education wasn’t reflected in even the vaccine information, or any of the message and coming from authority and participant side of instances where they had felt mistreated, or discriminated against, And express feeling unheard and really worn down by navigating public system. Predate, append, ohmic, The health care system, the benefits system, and even during the pandemic vaccine, appointment making system.
54:00
And this often contributed to repeated perception of inequity and class distinction, such as lower income neighborhoods will get lower quality vaccines or expired vaccine, and we’re not getting the correct information. And this is the chronically underserved that doctor Boyd so clearly describe.
54:19
Next slide, please.
54:21
So then why knowing these attitude and and perspectives WI focused on employers? Richard Research to date, has shown workers are more likely to get back then when an employer encourages it. And provide we’ve been Aaron and doctor Blay both spoke to this. And employers have a distinct opportunity to appeal to their unvaccinated employees because their agenda is clear.
54:45
Keep businesses open, keep customers safe, keep employees safe in our qualitative work, many expressed and understanding that businesses need to be able to do what they need to do to keep their workers and customer base.
54:58
And in turn, employers need to understand who will sell targeted and unsafe by certain policies, especially mandate.
55:04
Empathy needs to be the core at the core of any type of policy of any type of communication and the racial ethnic inequity theme throughout the pandemic. They threatened to be reflected in some of these mandates that we’re seeing being implemented right now, having different policy that for different wage earners, but in the same company, really risks perpetuating the inequities and perceptions of an equal access that our participants boy.
55:30
So in this context, I want to quickly go through some guidance for employers as communicators of vaccine information and considerations for mandate, but these these tips can sort of be taken for all types of communication around the vaccine. So, next slide, please.
55:46
So, first off, provide honest, transparent, and consistent, consistent information listening, focused on the epidemiology, the vaccine, to fix and playing consistent language.
55:57
But, also speak from a personal decision. You know, what, why, if you are the employer making this policy?
56:05
Did you choose to get back to needed? And why do you see it as the best route to keeping your employees and your community and customer base base?
56:15
But then, also connect this to Science, and help mitigate this chaotic information environment by being a source of clear scientific guidance and be clear of the risks that unvaccinated posed to employees and clients and also to each other, And then, offer support. This has been touched on in previous presentations, And we really need to mitigate the concern about missing work and, and losing a job or losing income because of short or long term vaccine side effects.
56:45
So this is a clear policy for paid time off, or something similar, depending on the work environment.
56:52
Then make vaccination easy and making unvaccinated difficult. So make vaccination easy mean, you do the research for your time strapped workforce. Figure out the best locations for them to get to conveniently. And then also be clear about why unvaccinated individuals will not be able to participate in certain activities, like, returning to travel, or working in person, for example.
57:19
And then, lastly, examine workplace culture regarding sick leave. We heard from individuals who continue to work through illness. And this is something that is more prevalent in certain industries. I’m a former chef. And if you could stand up, you went to work.
57:36
And this clearly has really harmful implications in pandemic or really just with any contagious environment. So, but this … Industries, we’re working through illness as a badge of honor, or is really expected, or really isn’t mitigated with any sort of supportive policy. That change needs to come from the top-down, They can’t come from the employee.
58:02
So, I will stop here, and I look forward to shielding any questions. Thank you.
58:12
Thanks so much, Lauren. I wanna remind everyone that this is the portion of time where we can really get into questions and answers with our panelists. So please make sure you’re using the question box on the goto Webinar site so that we can do that.
58:30
And maybe we can pull down Lauren slides and have the other panelists join us on camera for the questions and answers.
58:39
Um, This is really a question for all of you in every presentation, the importance of, um, addressing misinformation, or having clearly communicated, kind of scientific faith, messages with stress, kind of over and over. And we have a question from the audience that, you know, is really asking you all to kind of define misinformation.
59:05
On one hand, there’s a very clear, obvious disinformation campaigns that I think that, you know, you referred to doctor Boyd.
59:13
On the other, there’s just a shifting. You know, we also have a shifting kind of policy context, where recommendations and the science is changing rapidly.
59:23
So how do we think about, you know, misinformation and really work to develop these clear messages and guidelines for the public?
59:36
one given given that so much is changing so rapidly. And to understand standing that we do have there are some kind of active disinformation campaigns going on. I’ll just open that up to whoever would like to start.
59:54
I can take a first crack.
59:55
I think doctor Boyd really pointed to kind of this, this the reality that we’re talking about. And it’s our Lauren did as well. Like we’re talking about different segments here, right, that there’s this hardcore unboxed segment and then there’s folks who operate really on this continuum and that that information needs to be accessible to doctor Boyd with that.
1:00:22
Um, that, for folks who don’t have access either to a primary care physician, or they just just generally don’t have the time to, to kind of, do the researcher with their primary care physician, as opposed to, on Facebook or something, that, we need to recognize that that exists.
1:00:40
This is a public health crisis, because we look at, kind of, how, how places have been successful around the world in addressing public health crises, that there are door to door efforts, that I think, become part of this.
1:00:53
I think there are the kind of efforts, that number, the panelists talked about that might be more online, but effectively are kind of grassroots organizing that we need to fix our health care system, but we need to save a lot of lives before we get to fixing it.
1:01:07
And so, I think that recognizing that people want to be able to talk to experts in all of our research, even before covert, what we find is that people would much prefer to talk to experts into their crazy uncle, about all sorts of issues. Certainly medical issues. And so, getting folks access in their workplace. at their own.
1:01:30
There’s a stoop, you know, in their places where they congregate. I think that that’s really important. We do know what messages work. I think you heard messages from all tennis, which are pretty similar, right. In different kinds of research. But we need to think about how do we get those messages to people?
1:01:48
And we need to understand that we’re no longer at the place where one thing will sweep in other than maybe employer mandate that one thing will sweep in everyone.
1:01:59
And so, maybe employer mandates and making it available through your doctor, we have to do this bit by bit by bit and kind of grab different folks in different ways. And as more people get vaccinated, there’ll be more voices saying, yeah, it worked out for me. It wasn’t that big a deal.
1:02:17
At the beginning of the pandemic, and as a vaccine started to roll out, Covered Collaborative, did a poll that also over sampled Black and latin X folks. And what they found is that 41% of the people that they polled said, they knew little or nothing about how vaccines are created or work.
1:02:38
Which said, like we started with a health literacy gap actually in this country about like general health topics.
1:02:45
And so if we already on top of that Gap then had disinformation campaigns, which is intentional, spreading a false information about vaccines, that then people then spread misinformation, Or then you unintentionally kind of share that with other people. Hey, I heard there’s a microchip, and this vaccine, for example, is one that we created a video around. But right, there’s a ton of then this informal spreading on top of a lack of information that could counter it so that somebody could say, actually, how would that even work? I know how vaccines work. And so when a lot of our outreach, we’ve also just been doing basic health information.
1:03:21
What are the components of the immune system? What do antibodies mean? What does m-r.n.a.? So it’s been so fascinating to hear. An older black post is black people’s voices.
1:03:32
It sounds like my grandma and grandpa getting on the phone when we do these town halls and they’re like, what is m-r.n.a. like?
1:03:38
What is that? We’ve never heard of it? That’s why I think it might be altering my DNA, because it kind of sounds like DNA. And so, I think we also have to, as a healthcare system and, as I can say, this is a member of our system, I own the fact that we have not done a good job with educating about many things in health. And, so, we actually have to do that. Now. In tandem, we can’t just say, let me tell you all this about no vaccines, without giving people the background foundational knowledge to understand what we’re saying.
1:04:09
That’s terrific. Really helpful. Erin and maybe doctor Boyd and others, want to another question that came from the audience.
1:04:19
one thing that we’ve been hearing, especially among younger folks, is the concern around fertility, and what the vaccine may do to fertility, and there’s a question about, you know, Where does that concern come from?
1:04:33
But I’m more interested in, you know, How are we taking that question to your point, ria, Giving the community the opportunity to say. I’m concerned, this could lead to infertility, even if we know that the evidence says that’s probably not likely. It’s so valuable to know that, that’s what they’re, there fear in their question is, right. So, you know, does someone want to speak to you know maybe, where, we think that came from, but more importantly. How are we talking about that and acknowledging that, that is a concern that’s floating around and dealing with that in the community?
1:05:12
Yeah, I can start, and maybe hand it over to doctor Boyd but that is absolutely something that came up quite a bit in our discussions with the young adult age This fear over in fertility. I can’t say where exactly it started I think similar to microchips. It just kind of that rumor that spreads, and then you hear it through your social media channels, and it sticks. And I think some of the things that we heard from a lot of the young adult participants, they tended to say things like, Well, I don’t believe this. But, this is what I saw in my social media feed, Or, this is what I’ve heard, and you can see, there’s kind of this level of self doubt, but not wanting to come off as, oh, I fell down this kind of conspiracy theory, rabbit hole. That came up quite a bit in our discussion, is interesting when we asked folks about where they got their information, both healthcare information kind of general news and information. Of course, they pointed to social media a lot.
1:06:02
They talked about being able to tell the difference between a credible source through social media and a non credible source. But, they also tended to believe things that their friends shared bleeding, that people within their own networks, it’s going to be a trusted resource. And that seems to really have at least, led to a lot of confusion if not kind of going down to these myths that we debunk fertility and micro chipped in magnetization. and all those things that they really do tend to come up in a lot of the conversations that we had. I think similar to doctor Boyd I just 1000% agree with your previous comment on health education. And that’s also something that we do and have done pre pandemic of, just basic kind of health literacy and understanding how your health insurance works, why it’s important to set up relationships with primary care providers. And, we’re trying to kind of merge those things together and that’s something that we’ve seen, is worked pretty well. A kind of explaining what are in an RNA is and how the vaccines were developed and how it has actually been a 20 year process.
1:06:58
You know, stars from 2000 to 2003, and that seems to resonate, but you need to kinda get that basic education level down in order to build that foundation of why this is safe and effective. And I think it’s, Henry said earlier, in the presentation, it’s not just a one. No one silver bullet with young people, or with all people. It’s going to take trusted messengers from all walks of life. So one thing that I think will be very beneficial, and our outreach work is trying to train young adult messengers, to kind of have that information to share with their peers and other young people within their network. So that you’re hearing it from medical professionals, that you’re hearing it from Brexit naming your hearing it from your friend, who now kind of have answers that can kind of hopefully push people across the finish line, who have been a little bit kind of wait and see camp so far.
1:07:48
I agree. And I think, from our perspective, talking tech communities of color.
1:07:53
I think we also acknowledge that that particular myth becomes salient because people consider it alongside a historical context in which there is a very recent and then long history of sterilization of women of color.
1:08:11
Even as recently as women who were held and detention facilities in the South. And so and North Carolina, just two years ago, acknowledged, right, their long-term sterilization campaign.
1:08:26
And so there, I think the most effective disinformation is one that highlights a pain point that had an element of truth to it at one point. And then it becomes very difficult for people to tease out what part of that with the historical context, and which part of that could be true about this. I think then it also lays on top of a contemporary context in which the maternal mortality rates for black women, right, R 3 and 4 times that of white women. like, black women, are now increasingly aware of their risks as they try to have healthy infants And its risks that goes onto their infants, because we also see the infant mortality gap. And so these are very sensitive areas when black women are thinking about obtaining any type of healthcare. This is a major concern on their mind.
1:09:12
And so to hear it kind of surface during the vaccination effort, I think it only highlights how much this is a concern on people’s mind. And then it’s something that we have to address head on, instead of saying, oh, no, you have that wrong. That’s not what this is. We have to acknowledge, actually, that does occur. within a historical context, actually, There are risks to your maternal mortality. And so once we acknowledge that, what we talk a lot about is, what are the elements of a healthy pregnancy, and vaccination is actually a core element of a healthy pregnancy. A covered vaccination is not the only vaccination that’s recommended.
1:09:48
For women, too, be healthy during their pregnancy and to deliver a healthy neonates who has some transmitted immunities. And so we talk about that in terms of pregnancy. We talk about it in terms of breastfeeding so that people are aware of the ways we already encourage vaccination, actually. And then to Aaron’s point, we also at the end of our event say, if there was any fact that resonated with you, tell another person posted to your Facebook because we’re also hoping that the people who come to our session two or perhaps more motivated members of their family or their social networks, that they then become like a sentinel, a credible information for all of the people around them. So that hopefully, we can start to reach everybody, do the more informal chain. That is so powerful for spreading misinformation that if we can seed into that chain credible information that maybe then we could replace some of those.
1:10:39
Can I just follow up on that?
1:10:42
Those are the goals for doctor Ford excellent points.
1:10:47
So I just want to add a couple things, one, you know, that there was a lot of work that was done early to try to dispel kind of historic realities, right. Or so, I’m probably the most obvious of those, be, Tuskegee. But we see that same similar things in the Native American community, for instance.
1:11:09
But we actually found that that had less, that those concerns about those historic realities had less impact than concerns about current discrimination in the medical world.
1:11:23
And so I think it’s important that that the kind of effort to acknowledge that historic discrimination, you know. Maybe there’s value in that, but that’s not having nearly as much influences people who said that the members of their family had not been given appropriate treatment because of their race, or because of their language. You know, that, that folks, in their household had been made to wait for medical services, it, appropriately, so that these, again, because of their race or language use. And so, these, these are actually very influential in overcoming these, I think, to Aaron and doctor …
1:12:05
point, is, maybe even more focus should go, and then looking at things that happened years ago, It’s if people are concerned about their, their, their existing experiences, I’ll stop there.
1:12:19
Well, I think that’s a really important reminder for us, but probably the same principle holds true, that if we act like it doesn’t exist, it’s much less authentic when we’re trying to kind of reach this population, rather.
1:12:35
You know, acknowledging that there’s a reason for some of the historical concerns and acknowledging that there’s a reason, for some of the current distrust, because of the systemic discrimination that still going on, you know, illustrates that you understand where they’re coming from, and you have, you are a little bit grounded in some of the reality in your opening figure, Their experiences.
1:12:55
So thank you for pointing that out. We’re almost out of time. I could keep going with you guys all afternoon. I’m sure you have nowhere else you need to be.
1:13:04
Lauren. Maybe we’ll have start. You start this last question with you and have, have others jump in.
1:13:12
No, I was struck. I love your, you know, really specific recommendations for employers.
1:13:17
You know, what they can do to make a mandate and really, how they can really channel their responsibility, you know, and kind of helping to move this forward.
1:13:28
But, to be perfectly honest, even those of us with really amazing employers may not want to be that these may not be the issues we want to talk to them about, right?
1:13:37
And we just may not have that relationship that doctor Boyd Point, you know, if you’re not already comfortable with talking to your employers about these things.
1:13:47
You know, is it, Is it realistic to expect that folks are going to start engaging in that? Now?
1:13:51
So I’m just, I’m curious, if you see kind of, how important you’ll be, the ability for the employers to really partner, and help identify other partners in the community to really connect with their employees? Does the employer have to, kind of be the, be all, end all? Or they are more of a facilitator and gatekeeper if that, if
that, what is what works best for that community?
1:14:20
I think, more importantly, I think employers can be one version of that trusted messenger who can provide, you know, consistent, clear guidance.
1:14:31
I don’t think, I don’t think they’re a proxy for a doctor, but, you know, in the reality where, I also think that not one messenger has been a work for everybody, that boosting mandates aren’t going to move the needle for everybody. Incentives aren’t going to move the needle for everybody.
1:14:48
So I wanted to pick them out of one version, but I really do think that especially if we’re looking at a long term goal here, you know, rebuilding trust in information, in health care systems.
1:15:04
Nosey, to start from the grassroots and the models that have done that have been very successful throughout this pandemic has been, um, community based organizations that have pivoted out of necessity, to be facilitators of clear guidance. And it’s, you know, it’s asking a lot of time straps, or direct service workers to do this, but they found themselves in those roles and then be the part of the company. There are not companies.
1:15:33
But the partners who could step in and empower them in that role, those were really effective models.
1:15:41
But I think, you know, if an employer isn’t already, in that role, they’re not going to suddenly be who everyone is looking to. But there are employers who have those relationships with their employees, and returning to work is a really important priority for a lot of the population.
1:15:59
And so I didn’t mean to say that there are, you know, a proxy for some of the other messengers identified.
1:16:07
In fact, I think the, the more entrenched in the community starting there and empowering those organizations and individuals who’ve already built those relationships is much more important.
1:16:20
Great. Thank you so much.
1:16:22
And just, and just to emphasize that final point that there’s no one lever or incentive or message that’s going to connect with everyone that we want to reach. And just the importance of really continuing to let the data guide our work. And then, following that data, to going to the people, and the communities, and listening, And then making sure our no employer policies in our public policies really can point in the same direction to, to help support all of that. So, many, many thanks to all of you. It was fantastic to have you. And really appreciate you joining us. And for everyone else, thank you so much for joining us, and we will see you at our next event.
1:17:11
Thank you so much.