Will County making progress in vaccinating brown, Black communities

As COVID-19 cases increase throughout the state, an effort is being made to vaccinate members of Will County’s brown and Black communities.

The COVID-19 Justice and Equity for Will County Campaign in collaboration with the Illinois Department of Public Health hosted a vaccination clinic at Azteca de Oro banquet hall in Joliet on April 1.

A news release announcing the clinic said the priority was to vaccinate “essential workers of color who live in zip codes with the highest positive case ratios in Will County.”

“Over the past year we have seen how much work is required to be sure all communities are equitably served,” Veronica Ibarra, a Romeoville resident and leader at Southwest Suburban Immigrant Project, said in the release. “Without this effort, many will be left out of relief. Our communities feel most cared for when our individual needs are addressed and met and when our individual cultures and languages are seen as equally important.”

A number of barriers often stand between people of color in Will County and access to COVID vaccines, the release said. Often these people don’t have “access to information in one’s preferred language, access to reliable transportation, and access to the internet,” the release said.

The Will County Health Department has made an effort to vaccinate members of the brown and Black communities by partnering with other social service organizations, said Will County Health Department spokesman Steve Brandy.

The Joliet chapter of the National Hook-up of Black Women, Mount Zion Baptist Church in Joliet, Freedom Movers Church in University Park, the Spanish Community Center in Joliet and Mount Carmel Church in Joliet have hosted vaccine clinics, the health department said.

Manuela Botello, business manager of Mount Carmel Church in Joliet, has helped arrange for members of the Hispanic community to be vaccinated and even held two vaccine clinics at the church earlier this year.

“I had two individuals who were told by their doctors, ‘Call Mount Carmel. They are giving vaccines to people,’” Botello said.

Botello said Mount Carmel has also helped connect members of the Hispanic community with other vaccine clinics. She knows these people are vulnerable to severe COVID and the church just wants to help.

“I’ve had people in tears tell me, ‘I never thought my church was the place where I was going to be able to get a vaccine or that I would get in touch with someone where I could get my vaccines,’” Botello said.

Debra Upshaw, president of the Joliet Chapter of the National Hook-up of Black Women, Inc., said her organization is helping to connect members of the Black community with vaccine clinics. One way NHBW does this is by contacting people when vaccination slots are open are various clinics.

“We’re the gap-fillers,” Upshaw said. “We’re here to help advocate for people. One way we’re doing that is helping people get the necessary vaccine so that we can get back to some normalcy.”

Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox has also helped in scheduling appointments for local members of the brown and Black communities since it’s nationally known that “Black and brown individuals are getting sick and dying of COVID-19 at rates higher than white individual,” Debra Robbins, director of marketing and communications at Silver Cross, said.

Brandy said Blacks and Hispanics represent 11% and 18% of Will County’s population respectively. As of last week, the vaccination rate was 7% among Blacks and 10% among Hispanics, he said.

With the support of Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant and the health department, Silver Cross reached out to its contacts within the Silver Cross Healthy Community Commission to make vaccine appointments “readily available to our local Black and brown communities in accordance with Phase 1B,” Robbins said.

Phase 1b includes those age 65 and older, first responders, day care workers, corrections officers and inmates, food and agriculture workers, postal service workers, manufacturing workers, grocery store workers, public transit workers, educators and support staff, shelters and adult day care workers and those age 65 and younger with high-risk medical issues.

Priority groups are designated by health departments in accordance with federal government protocols.

“I’m pleased to report that as a result, we’ve been successful in vaccinating nearly a thousand of individuals of color over the last month and will continue this outreach as long as we are able,” Robbins said.

Brandy said the health department uses other means to connect the vaccine message with all people in Will County, especially those age 65 and up and the “socially disadvantaged.”

These include information on the health department website, automated messaging via email, text, and voicemail, townships offices and through the hiring of a public relations firm, Brandy said.

In regard to the vaccine clinics themselves, Brandy said the health department has “two tracks” in its efforts to vaccinate Will County residents: workforce channels and external clinics. Vaccine clinics must meet two criteria, he said.

The location of the vaccine clinic must be accessible, and the location must serve the “socially disadvantaged,” Brandy said. The health department itself is located “in a demographically disadvantaged community” and the clinic itself administers 300 to 600 vaccines every day, Brandy said.

Workforce channels are also an effective way to vaccinate people in minority populations. IDPF has set protocols and criteria for vaccinating first responders and workers in food processing plants, grocery stores and manufacturing, among others, Brandy said.

Brandy said that according to Will County workforce data the percentages of Black, Hispanic or Asian populations working in the following industries in Will County are: general warehousing and storage (28%), health care (15%), grocery (15%), skilled nursing and home health (26%), child daycare services (16%), couriers and delivery (25%).

He stressed that even though more than 100,000 people in Will County are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, people must still be vigilant in their activities to help prevent transmission of the virus.

“Managing this pandemic is more than making tests available and getting shots in the arms,” Brandy said. “It is constantly evolving, requiring continuous changes to policy and protocols. We always have to be ready for new information and requirements that necessitate making a right turn when we were planning to continue on a straight line.”