New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
‘SHOULDER to SHOULDER’
Yale van works with local trusted leaders to vaccinate hard-to-reach residents
NEW HAVEN — Desperate times call for aggressive measures — and in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic, during which “falling through the cracks” of traditional health care could spell serious illness or death, the Yale Community Health Care Van is built for the job.
Created in 1993 to combat the HIV/ AIDS epidemic, homelessness and mental illness, as well as treat opioid addiction and provide neonatal care in the city’s poorest and traditionally underserved neighborhoods, the 40-foot van is
now taking it to the streets to vaccinate people right in their neighborhoods.
The program, in partnership with Fair Haven Community Health Care and city churches, even teams up with AMR ambulances that the van’s staff can send straight to the homes of people who can’t get out.
And all these activities are part of the same mission.
“It’s about keeping people safe,” said Dr. Frederick Altice, a Yale School of Medicine professor who specializes in infectious diseases and epidemiology and is the creator of the Community
Health Care Van program.
The blue, white and red van was repurposed 11 months ago to help protect at-risk New Haveners from COVID-19, Altice said.
All of the things the van does are different facets of the same mission, “because it’s the same community who we’re trying to protect from COVID transmission,” he said. “If you happen to be at the margins of the community” and “either you don’t have access to the Internet or if you have access, you’re just not that skilled at navigating it, then those are the people who fall through the cracks.”
After months of doing mobile coronavirus testing and distributing personal protective equipment, the van and its staff teamed up with Fair Haven Community Health Care and made its debut two weeks ago as a mobile COVID vaccination clinic, based to start in Fair Haven, where the community has organized an all-out “Vaccinate/Vacunate Fair Haven” initiative aiming to knock on all 5,642 doors in Fair Haven.
Since then it has done clinics at two Fair Haven-area churches — Una Iglesia Para La Ciudad on Pearl Street and, this past Friday, at the Walk of Faith Church of Christ on Fairmount Avenue, tucked in the seam between Fair Haven, Fair Haven Heights and the Annex.
Many of the 50 people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine Friday at Walk of Faith were nervous about getting it.
“I didn’t want to do it, but I just did,” said Furman Collins, 59, a member of the church even though he lives in the city’s Newhallville section. His mother, who lives near the church, also is a member.
“The first lady got me here,” Collins said, referring to “Lady Fay” Williams, wife of Pastor Walter Williams III, who organized the clinic on the church’s end. “It’s more convenient and more relaxing” than going to one of the big vaccination clinics in the city, Collins said as he sat down during his 15-minute waiting period after receiving his shot.
Most of the people who came out for the clinic spoke fluent English. But three members of the van’s staff — medical assistant Angel Ojeda, case manager and driver Rolo Lopez Sr. and his son, Rolo “Rolito” Lopez Jr., who handles the needle exchange program — speak fluent Spanish and can interpret if needed, said van Director Sharon Joslin.
Fay Williams arranged for the van to come to the church after previously organizing a pop-up clinic by the Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center at the church. She also happens to be a retired Army nurse who was a public health nurse during a 28-year career that included tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and Belgium.
It took just four days — from Monday to Friday — to get the clinic set up and get the word out, she said.
Many of the people who showed up to be vaccinated, both church members and others, found out Wednesday, when Walk of Faith Church opens its food pantry to the community. Others were contacted directly by the church. Some found out the day of the clinic, which vaccinated people both in the van and in the church basement.
A few just saw the van parked out front.
Sammy Davis, 52 — who lives next-door to the church — had no qualms about getting vaccinated on the very first day he was eligible.
“I’ve been waiting for my day,” said Davis, one of the 400,000 state residents who became newly eligible for the vaccine Friday. “Today is my day!”
What now?
“I’m hoping to stay safe!” Davis said. “I’ve got faith in God” to make sure that’s the case.
“It’s a beautiful thing, because people can’t get to it,” Davis said, referring both to the mobile vaccination van and the church-based clinic. Carlos Ramos, 50, who wore a “Superman” knit cap given to him by his grandson, found out about the van’s visit at the church’s food bank on Wednesday.
“I was skeptical to get the vaccine,” but “my mom just got COVID” and “it was hard on all of us because we couldn’t see her for a month,” said Ramos, whose uncle died of COVID-19 in New Jersey.
Neighbors Miller Pete, 54, and Tina Marco, 53, had been trying to sign up for other vaccination clinics. When the opportunity came to get it at Walk of Faith, they jumped at it. Why?
“Because I’m scared,” said Marco. “I know so many people that died from COVID that it’s a cryin’ shame.”
Dr. Leslie Sude, an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at Yale, was vaccinating people in the basement of Walk of Faith Church Friday while Henna Boolchandani, a thirdyear medical resident, was vaccinating people in the van, which was parked in the church parking lot.
Sude, one of the people who oversees the van’s programs, said Friday’s clinic was arranged in partnership with Dr. Hyung Paek, a doctor at the Fair Haven Community Health Clinic who has facilitated the connection between the van program and the clinic.
The van obtains its vaccine supply through Fair Haven Community Health, which is one of the qualified health centers to which the state distributes its vaccine supply directly.
Sude, who works as a pediatrician at Fair Haven Community Health Care, said she got involved with the van because of “a longstanding interest and awareness ... about health inequities and health disparities.”
“We’ve actually talked about how poverty and health are connected,” Sude said. “Doctors are increasingly recognizing that poverty and health disparities are connected . ... So it kind of organically flowed for me when the pandemic started,” she said.
“Leslie is a shining light,” said Altice. “I just love her energy. She’s completely aligned with what I’m doing.”
One key part of the effort is “being able to partner and be trusted by local organizations” such as the churches, said Sude. “We are kind of working shoulder-to-shoulder with people whom the community does trust . ... We’ve been talking to a bunch of churches. We just set up our dates for the next month — two or three days a week.”
Fay Williams said she found out that the Community Health Care Van was looking to partner with some churches from an update sent out by a city Health Department coordinator. She hooked up with
Hill Health Center first, which did a pop-up clinic about three weeks ago.
She found out about the van early last week — and somehow they made it happen in just four days.
“We want to be a blessing to our community,” said Williams, who grew up in New Haven but now lives with her husband in North Branford’s Northford section. Her mother, Doris Galberth, 85, was one of the people who got vaccinated Friday.
“My daughter’s running this thing, so I thought I’d better come over,” Galberth said after getting her shot, as Janet Jackson, a retired nurse who is a member of the church, watched over her and others who were asked to wait 15 minutes before leaving.
Some people who go to the church or live in the neighborhood “have language barriers,” said Williams. “That’s why the van is going to be important, because they can see this van” and know that they can get help there.
Paek said of the van’s work, “I believe this is important. I see an opportunity.” He said that as the clinic’s vaccination activities began, he “started speaking to Leslie and her unique team, which have been around for decades.
“What her team brings is a wealth of experience serving the population,” Paek asid. “They’re bilingual, which helps tremendously serving the population here in Fair Haven. They also have a van that’s already equipped. Those are very attractive items that we wanted to use.”
The need for ways to reach hardto-reach communities is clear, Paek said.
When it comes to getting vaccine appointments, “primarily, it’s technology-based, so if you are savvy with your computer or your smartphone, you can get an appointment. But there are people who don’t have that skill set, who don’t have access to the Internet, who don’t have the resources.”
The churches and other community organizations play important roles, Paek said.
“If we tell the people ... they will still have doubts, but if it comes from somebody they trust, from a church, from a synagogue, then they will” get vaccinated, he said.
Jackson, the retired nurse, thought it was great that the van “is out and that it goes into the community,” as well that it was partnering with churches.
“A lot of people have a fear about it,” Jackson said. “But they trust their church.”