Campaign with local residents urges Milwaukeeans to vaccinate
Milwaukee’s Gwen Washington was hesitant about the COVID-19 vaccine for several months.
A resident of the area of Sherman Park and Wahl Park, she said she lost family members and close friends to the virus, which has taken a disproportionate toll on Black and Hispanic residents.
Both communities have also seen vaccination rates lag those of white Milwaukeeans.
But the messages from officials in Washington, D.C. about the vaccine felt distant and unrelatable. She didn’t feel she had enough information about it. And it didn’t feel like the information that was reaching her community reflected the experience of living in the eye of the storm.
Ultimately, it was the information placed in the food pantry box, the newspaper in the grocery store, the messaging in her church and on the local news that made her reconsider.
She felt brave and calm after she got her first vaccine dose at the Wisconsin Center last week. After seeing how it went for her, four of her family members made their own appointments.
“All this stuff was coming from Washington, and it was the same communication but it was at a distance. It was like they were talking at you and not to you,” she said.
The local information, in contrast, “spoke directly to me.”
Now, Washington will be the one speaking directly to her neighbors, friends and the broader community through ads on television, radio, billboards and the internet.
She is one of 13 people who are telling their stories as part of a local campaign to build confidence in the vaccines. The campaign launches Monday.
The ads will pair with door-to-door canvassing by at least 150 trained “mobilizers” who will focus on 15 vulnerable ZIP codes in the Milwaukee area. The team will aim to be nimble, providing updated vaccine information to residents as it becomes available, organizers said.
The ZIP codes — 53204, 53205, 53206, 53208, 53209, 53210, 53212, 53214, 53215, 53216, 53219, 53223, 53224, 53225 and 53233 — include a large swath of Milwaukee but also parts of Glendale, Brown Deer and West Allis.
The effort is expected to represent an investment of more than $900,000, with about one-third coming from inkind donations and the remainder from direct funding. The campaign still has to raise about $150,000.
Organizers are aiming to run the campaign through the end of summer. Its goal is to see 75% to 85% of the adult population vaccinated to reach herd immunity, said Mara Lord, chair of the Milwaukee area vaccine communications and community mobilization efforts.
The effort is meant to reach residents Lord described as in the “moveable middle” who are influential in their own families and communities. Those include Hispanic and Black women between the ages of 35 and 54.
They’re also targeting white men over 35 years old who describe themselves as Republicans, and white men and women between the ages of 18 and 34 years old.
Black and Hispanic Milwaukee area residents who were not planning to get the vaccine said in focus groups that they needed timely, medically accurate information. But they also wanted to know why others in their communities chose to get the vaccine.
“They had questions about campaigns and really wanted to know ... who’s behind that campaign. Is it someone who really cares about me? Is it someone who shared my same lived experiences?” said Lorraine Lathen, who led the focus groups and is president and chief executive officer of Jump at the Sun Consultants.
Members of the community are in front of the camera and behind it as photographers and videographers, she said.
The ad and on-the-ground campaign were led by a group of local government, nonprofit, health care, public health and community organizations.
Lathen said she feels the same urgency today that she did when she started her career in Africa during the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
Although the ad campaign is meant to spark the discussion, it must be coupled with in-person efforts to share information and direct residents to the right places to get the vaccine, she said.
Targeting such a range of residents may in other circumstances be a challenge, she said.
She doesn’t expect that to be the case this time.
“Intuitively, I think across all of those lines that the common desire is to get back ... to the people, the things we love, regardless of race, regardless of class,” she said.