Milwaukee health center to vaccinate tribal members
The Gerald L. Ignace Indian Health Center will immunize any Milwaukee County adults who are enrolled tribal members at a vaccination event this week.
Up to 360 people will be vaccinated at the event, which will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Thursday at the health center, 930 W. Historic Mitchell St., in Milwaukee, according to a spokesman for the health center.
Pre-registration is required. People who are eligible and would like a vaccine may go to gliihc.net/covidvaccine registration or call 414-316-3737 to sign up.
The event also is open to tribal descendants who live in the county. Vaccine recipients will need to provide proof of descendance, a tribal ID or a certificate of degree of Indian blood.
COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Native communities, in part because of long-standing social inequities that put Native people at higher risk of developing serious illness from the virus.
“With Natives being third in (COVID-19) case rates, second in hospitalizations and first in fatality rates, it really has become apparent the urgency of assuring that high-risk Natives in an urban setting like Milwaukee have an opportunity to get that vaccine,” said Dr. Lyle Ignace, executive director of the health center.
The health center is putting on the community vaccination event with the help of the state Department of Health Services, which is sending a mobile vaccination team to help out, said Jeremiah Wayman, a spokesman for the health center.
The mobile vaccination teams are generally made up of about a half-dozen Wisconsin National Guard members who help with greeting, check-in, providing background information on the vaccine and monitoring after the shot is given, said Maj. Joe Trovato, spokesman for the National Guard.
Wayman said the state is also providing half of the 360 vaccine doses that will be administered through the event. The health center also has been receiving vaccine through the Indian Health Service, a federal agency.
Before this week, the health center was offering vaccinations only to its established patients, Wayman said.
Milwaukee County has the largest concentration of Natives in Wisconsin, with about 14,500 people who identify as Native living in the county, according to Census data.
However, only about 580 Natives living in Milwaukee County have been vaccinated against COVID-19, according to Department of Health Services data. That number could be slightly higher, since the state doesn’t have race data on about 10% of the county’s vaccine recipients.
Native vaccination rates fall behind those of white Milwaukee County residents. While Natives make up about 1.5% of the county’s population, they have only received less than half a percent of the vaccines for county residents.
It’s a phenomenon that has also played out in the county’s Black and Hispanic communities, who are underrepresented in the county’s vaccine recipients.
State officials have touted the mobile vaccination teams as a way to target underserved communities and to broaden access to the vaccine.
Officials with the Ignace health center hope Native vaccination rates in the county will improve with initiatives like this week’s event.
“It is concerning, which is why this event is so important to us and why we jumped on it as soon as it was offered to us,” Wayman said.
The health center hopes to also immunize some educators with the Indian Community School in Franklin through the event.
Ignace said he would be interested in collaborating with the state to put on more vaccination events in the future. He said he would like to expand eligibility to include Native people living outside Milwaukee County.
“The demand for the vaccine is growing each day, and I think more and more people are willing — they’re eager now to get back to some type of new normal, other than COVID right now,” he said.
Sarah Volpenhein is a Report for America corps reporter who focuses on news of value to underserved communities for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Email her at svolpenhei@gannett.com. .