Las Vegas health community seeks to get word out on vaccines to non-english speakers
Government and nonprofit health and community services organizations are expanding their COVID19 educational campaigns about the newly released vaccines not just in English and Spanish, but soon, Thai and Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese.
“Just duplicating it and translating it into another language is not enough,” said Erika Marquez, a UNLV public health professor and coalition vice chair. “We had to engage these communities in the conversation, and that takes some time.”
Since the two
COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in the United States arrived in Nevada hospitals this month, the Southern Nevada health district has posted the tiered priority access list in English and Spanish. The health district also partners on the local Esta En Tus Manos (“It’s In Your Hands”) initiative to reach Spanish speakers.
A spokeswoman for Immunize Nevada said the Reno-based group had released vaccine promotional materials in English and Spanish and developed radio and television spots in both languages, and is working on messages in other languages.
In the Las Vegas area, Dr. Fermin Leguen, the health district’s acting chief health officer, provides remarks in Spanish to Spanish-language outlets. PHLV, a radio station for Vegas’ sizable Filipino diaspora, has highlighted the vaccines on its health-related programming.
PHLV host Marife Aczon-armstrong, a nursing professor at Roseman University of Health Sciences and founding president of the Asian American Pacific Islander Nurses Association of Nevada, invited Roseman colleague and immunologist Manas Mandal to join her on the air earlier this month to explain — in English — how the vaccine works. As a guest on another PHLV show with the Asian Community Development Council, Aczon-armstrong related, and encouraged more of, a welcoming Filipino perspective on vaccination.
She said as a child in the Philippines, she lined up with other pupils to get shots