Study: Education, outreach on vaccine should be increased
Increasing education on the COVID-19 vaccine and helping ease the registration process may be the best ways to make sure more residents get vaccinated, according to a study published by an immigrant advocacy group.
For the study, commissioned by FIEL Houston and conducted by data analyst Jazmine Orazi, health care workers, or “promotoras,” went door to door in four zip codes where vaccination rates were low. The workers tried to register residents for a vaccine while also collecting data on barriers to access and the pandemic’s overall effect on the community. The study was conducted in March, largely when access was limited to older adults, those with underlying conditions, health care workers and education workers.
“As usual, we got a lot of stories about resiliency but we also received a lot of stories of frustration and peril,” said FIEL Executive Director Cesar Espinosa.
Espinosa presented the study Friday to Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo at a rent relief registration event in Sharpstown.
“We hope that these findings will help to craft policies in the future to maximize the aid to
wards often forgotten communities. Our community continues to be essential prior to, during the and after the pandemic,” Espinosa said.
The “promotoras” signed up 1,942 people for vaccines after traveling to 7,710 homes, FIEL said, though only some were willing to share data on vaccine barriers and attitudes.
The most common barrier to vaccinations was a lack of knowledge as to where to get one, with more than half of respondents in each of the four zip codes — 77078, 77087, 77504 and 77502 — reporting that they didn’t know where to go, the study shows. The second most common barrier was work hours.
When analyzing data by insurance status, FIEL found that about half of people on Medicaid or without insurance needed help signing up, while only about a quarter of respondents who had private insurance said they needed assistance.
Between 20 percent and 25 percent of respondents in three zip codes — 77078, 77087 and 77504 — said they were uninterested in getting a vaccine at all. Just 3 percent of respondents in the fourth zip code, 77502, said they didn’t want a vaccine, though 42 percent said they needed help signing up.
Over 25 percent of people who didn’t want a vaccine refused to share their reasoning, according to the study, suggesting that “vaccine education should be tailored to the needs of the community and be delivered in a way that is both understanding and compassionate to the concerns of the community members.” The majority of those that did say why they did not want a vaccine cited health and safety concerns.
FIEL suggested that Houston and Harris County could increase education around the vaccine’s safety by partnering with reputable institutions in the Texas Medical Center and going door to door with health care workers that are representative of the communities being targeted. They also recommended, among other things, that officials extend assistance programs for people who lost work, which was one of the biggest challenges respondents said they faced during the pandemic.
About 53 percent of people in Harris County have been vaccinated against the coronavirus so far. Infections, however, are on the rise, with the delta variant increasing hospitalizations by about 75 percent in recent weeks. Unvaccinated people account for the majority of those hospitalizations.