In vaccine search, love and community find a way

A few weeks ago, two teachers who’d once worked together crossed paths in a local Costco. It had been more than 20 years, but even behind their masks, the two women recognized each other.

Their conversation quickly turned to COVID-19, with one expressing frustration that she’d been unable to get her 101-yearold mother vaccinated. Her friend told her about the COVID Community Outreach Program, or CCOP, the grassroots effort to register the vulnerable and underserved for vaccinations.

The program began with Black women doing what Black women have always done: Identify a problem, then organize to solve it for the benefit of people beyond those in their communities.

The impetus for CCOP came the last weekend of January when two sisters, Francine ProsserJohnson and Bonnie Prosser Elder, tried to help a friend’s mother get an appointment. Over the weekend, the two dialed, repeatedly, on four cell phones and one landline. On Sunday, after more than 2,000 attempts, Bonnie, general counsel and senior vice president with VIA Metropolitan Transit, got through.

She told the woman who answered, “I feel like I’ve hit the Lotto to get you on the line and to allow me to schedule this shot, not even for me but my friend’s mom.”

Also, in January, the offices of South Texas Center for Pediatric Care, where Fran is chief operating officer and Dr. Dianna BurnsBanks is president, was getting frequent calls asking if it was offering vaccinations.

The calls the sisters were making, and the calls the center was receiving, underscored how desperately people wanted to be vaccinated. It also got Bonnie and Fran thinking about the many African American seniors they knew who hadn’t been vaccinated.

Over the next few days, their conversation grew to include Burns-Banks and Jelynne LeBlanc Jamison, president and CEO of the Center for Health Care Services, and would lead to the creation of CCOP and a partnership with University Health System to target seniors and other vulnerable people having difficulty getting registered.

After Fran’s email was flooded with requests, Erin Sylve, a student from Texas A&M University in College Station, created a Google Doc for people to enter their information for CCOP to send to University Health. By the day, the list grew.

State Rep. Barbara GervinHawkins organized a conference call with Fran, Bonnie, BurnsBanks, Jamison and representatives from the Baptist Members Union and Community of Churches for Social Action. Several churches committed members to registering people for appointments. Linda Waiters of St. Paul UMC and Linda Bryant of Bethel AME are among those who, each day, before 2 p.m. send names to Fran, who uploads them to University Health.

She describes this as a threestep process, “You register. We schedule. You go.”

Through a grant from Beverly Watts Davis, chief operating officer for WestCare Foundation, two full-time staffers were hired. Working out of the offices of South Texas Center for Pediatric Care, they schedule and notify people about appointments.

As of Thursday, more than 6,200 people had been registered and more than 5,000 vaccinated. Joyfully vaccinated.

The oldest is 106-year-old Ethel Carroll. When Fran called to ask how she was feeling, Carroll asked, “Baby, when is my next shot?”

After the teacher from the Costco store got her 101-year-old mother vaccinated, she sent Fran a meme of Snoopy dancing.

Then there’s the 90-year-old man who slit a hole in his nice dress shirt.

“Look what I did!” he said in a text. “I wanted to make it easier for them to give me a shot.”

When the call was made to a couple in their 80s to tell them they had an appointment, the woman started crying. They have an adult special-needs son.

“If something happens to us, who’s going to take care of him?” she asked. “I can’t believe I finally got the call. Thank you for calling.”

Reflecting on that, Bonnie asks, “What level of burden is it for a mother to worry about not just getting sick because she doesn’t want to get sick, but ‘If I get sick and it takes me out. It’s not about me but then who cares for him or her?’ We read the stories of the pain, suffering and death. This is something positive. You can get someone protected. You can get someone vaccinated. We are our brother’s keeper.”

CCOP was created out of relationships and a shared love for community.

“We call it Black Girl Magic,” says Bonnie. “Fran and I are sisters. Dianna is part of our village. Jelynne is part of our village. Beverly is part of our village.”

Bill Phillips, University Health’s senior vice president and chief information officer, says, “It’s valuable what they’re doing on their own time. It’s stellar, noble.”

Noble. Thank you, queens.

Courtesy photo