‘We want everyone to be healthy’
Effort to vaccinate Hispanic community brings officials out to Wolf Lake
Latino leaders and the Indiana State Department of Health took steps Saturday to help vaccinate Northwest Indiana’s Hispanic population with a mass vaccination clinic at Wolf Lake in Hammond.
State Rep. Mike Andrade, D-Munster, was the driving force behind the effort to bring the Latino-targeted vaccine clinic to the North Hammond/Robertsdale area. Andrade said he began pushing for the clinic after he saw how well the first clinic at Calumet High School in Gary worked to target the African American community and how the clinic at Roosevelt High School still does.
According to the ISDH vaccination dashboard, only 3.3% of fully-vaccinated Hoosiers are Hispanic, despite the Latino community representing 6.2% of Indiana’s population. In comparison, 85.2% of fully-vaccinated Hoosiers are white, who represent 86% of the population. A majority of Hispanic Hoosiers reside in Lake County.
“As the only fully Hispanic legislator in the state, I felt it was my responsibility as a leader to do something about it,” Andrade said.
He worked with the Dr. Kristina Box and the ISDH for two months leading up to the clinic to remove barriers like an ID and residency requirement to help get more of the Hispanic population, some of whom are undocumented, vaccinated.
“We are all human beings. We want everyone to be
healthy. We want our state and our country to continue going in the right direction. Once we do, we can get back to normality,” Andrade said.
Many Latinos are front-line workers, Andrade said. Immigrants work on farms, they are cooks who work in restaurants and in the hospitality industry, construction and landscaping. Latinos make up about 20% of the population in Lake County, he said.
“We know the i mmigrant community is here. They are strong,” Andrade said. Official numbers don’t always show the true population due to the undocumented population.
Attorney Alfredo Estrada, who co-chairs the immigration practice group at Burke Costanza & Carberry LLC, said outreach to the Latino community that this is a safe place where a vaccine can be obtained and your immigration status not questioned was an important component to the success of the clinic. Top down outreach does not work well in the immigrant community due to a lack of trust.
“It’s really lateral community-based outreach that needs to be done rather than the state coming down with the outreach,” Estrada said.
There has been an issue with undocumented people getting vaccinations because of identification and residency requirements.
“That’s off-putting to the undocumented. It may be terrifying for them to announce they are here,” Estrada said. “I’m not saying that is wrong or right, but that’s what it is. Now we have to make up for that.”
Having the information that it is safe to go get vaccinated and that legal status is not important come from trusted community organizations and individuals makes the difference, he said.
“We don’t want families to get sick and die. We don’t want families knowingly spreading the disease,” Estrada said.
The Hammond clinic is a partnership between many. On Saturday, The Food Bank of Northwest Indiana was expected to distribute food boxes to those getting the vaccine while Strack & Van Til supermarkets was expected to provide a carnation to the first 150 mothers to be vaccinated in honor of Mother’s Day.
Other partners in this effort include: Rise NWI, a nonprofit that empowers local residents; the School City of Hammond; Elise Shrock, chairwoman of the Indiana Latino Democratic Caucus; Food Bank of Northwest Indiana; Strack & Van Til food market; Estrada; Hammond Education Foundation; and Hammond Hispanic Community.
Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said according to the latest U.S. Census estimate, the city has a 30% Hispanic population. Unfortunately, because of a language barrier that exists in many of these households, the proportion of vaccinated Hispanic resident is lower as compared to other demographic groups.
“That’s why I want to thank Rep. Mike Andrade for helping to organization this vaccination clinic in Hammond. Although the clinic focuses on Northwest Indiana’s Hispanic community, it is open to anybody regardless of their ethnic background who is seeking to become vaccinated against COVID-19,” he said.
“I have no doubt that this vaccination clinic will go a long way toward reducing the number of Hoosiers infected with this horrific disease,” McDermott said.
Jeni O’Malley, chief communications officer with the ISDH, said communities of color, including the Latino community, have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
“We see higher rates of hospitalization among these communities, in part because many members may have underlying health conditions that put them at greater risk of severe Illinois if they get COVID19,” O’Malley said.
Currently more than 37% of eligible Hoosiers are fully vaccinated with a very high uptake among people ages 60 and older. The state’s current focus is on increasing vaccinations rates among younger populations.
Lake County has 485,493 residents, of which 19.6% are Latino/ Hispanic, compared to 7.3% statewide. Currently there are about 122,656 fully vaccinated individuals in Lake County with more than 2 million fully vaccinated people statewide.