Health Care News

Vaccine confidence is the trust that patients, parents, and providers have in recommended vaccines, the providers who administer them, and in the processes and policies that lead to the vaccine’s development, licensure, manufacturing, and recommendations for use.

Establishing confidence in the COVID-19 vaccines is essential to end this pandemic. Transparency about the vaccine — its safety, development, efficacy, and side effects will be critical to building this confidence among providers and other health center staff. If they confidently receive the vaccine, then they can confidently promote it to their patients and the community.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends several strategies below for building confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine among staff working in health care settings. Work with your COVID-19 vaccination teams to customize the strategies that work best for your staff.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/downloads/VaccinateWConfidence-Immunization-Coordinators_508.pdf

STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING COVID-19 VACCINE CONFIDENCE

• Encourage senior leaders to be vaccine champions.

• Host discussions where personnel at different levels can provide input and ask questions.

• Share consistent and clear information promoting the benefits of the vaccine frequently and through multiple communication channels including emails, Intranet, and breakroom posters.

• Educate healthcare teams about COVID-19 vaccines, how they are developed and monitored for safety, and how teams can talk to others about the vaccines.

• Educate non-medical staff about the importance of getting vaccinated. Create opportunities for them to provide feedback and answer questions.

• Make the decision to get vaccinated visible to others and celebrate it!

To learn more about the science supporting the COVID-19 vaccines and building vaccine confidence in your health center, download the CDC’s Building Vaccine Confidence in Health Systems and Clinics: Tips for Immunization/Vaccine Coordinators.

We are all in this together. Building defense against COVID-19 in our communities is a team effort, and it starts with health care systems including health centers.

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In Mississippi the story of Dr. L.C. Dorsey is legendary.

It is a story of perseverance and courage; a story of a woman born into poverty in the Mississippi Delta in 1938, who at an early age set out to find the path to a better life. A child of tenant farmer parents, Lula C. (“L.C.”) Dorsey would go on to play a major role in the development of the national health center model.

Like many in Bolivar County, Mississippi, Dr. Dorsey’s life was a struggle for survival. Discrimination and hardship were rampant for families working in the fields. Opportunities for education, jobs paying a decent wage, and health care were few, if nonexistent.

The advent of the civil rights movement coupled with the emergence of anti-poverty programs aimed at providing people the tools to help themselves aided Dr. Dorsey, as she invested her energies in every opportunity to learn, train, and use and her talents to fight for and help others.

Dr. Dorsey began her journey in the 1960s as a civil rights advocate. Recruited by the prominent civil and women’s rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, she became involved with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party – organizing boycotts and demonstrations. She also began to work with the newly created Head Start program (a War on Poverty initiative) encouraging families to enroll their preschoolers.

In 1966, with her growing connections and leadership within the community, she was asked to join the staff at Tufts-Delta Health Center, which was the first rural Community Health Center in America.

Her role at the federally funded health center was to mobilize community support for its multifaceted programs aimed at a mostly Black population facing poor health, malnutrition, and poverty. The health center model was transformative because it sought not only to treat illness but to directly intervene against the root causes of it – including poverty, lack of food and jobs, and poor drinking water.

Dr. Dorsey became a leading force at the center and, ultimately, served as its director from 1988 to 1995. In addition, she is credited, along with Dr. John Hatch, the co-founder of the Delta Health Center, with the establishment of a Farm Cooperative for Bolivar County – which helped hundreds in the area grow and cultivate food for their families.

In an interview with the Rutherford Living History project, Dr. Dorsey talked about the success of the cooperative, both in terms of the participation of hundreds of member families but also of its ability to withstand harassment from external forces:

“We were organized. We had all the political things in place and were participating at different levels. We learned the value of boycotts so we didn’t suffer any firebombings or any such nonsense.”

During this period, Dr. Dorsey, while raising a family of six, was determined to put herself on track to continue her own education. She had dropped out of school at 11. Twenty years later, through a program offered by Tufts University, she acquired her GED. Eventually, she earned a master’s degree from the State University of New York and a Ph.D. in Social Work from Howard University in Washington, D.C. Dr. Dorsey went on to become a Clinical Associate Professor at University of Mississippi Medical Center.

In addition to economic development and health care, Dr. Dorsey was committed to exposing the injustices in the Mississippi prison system, where she gained recognition by the ACLU for her work on prison reform.

The common thread running through all these accomplishments was Dr. Dorsey’s dedication to dismantling the oppressive systems that held back the Black community in the Mississippi Delta and beyond.

In a 1992 interview, Dr. Dorsey summed up her focus on tackling the root causes of social problems:

“The real thing is to understand the political, social, and economic structures and how you overcome [them] if they are barriers or you seize control of them.”

In her lifetime, Dr. Dorsey was honored by numerous national organizations, including the State of Mississippi, for her community involvement and activism. Her legacy and personal story continue to inspire all those who seek a better life and future.

Marilynne Mikulich contributed to this profile.

Sources:

Legacy of L.C. Dorsey Is Unparalleled In the War on Poverty In Mississippi

Video of a 1992 Rutherford Living History interview with Dr. Dorsey

Out in the Rural: A Mississippi Health Center and Its War on Poverty, Thomas J. Ward, Jr. and H. Jack Geiger

http://livinghistory.sanford.duke.edu/interviews/l-c-dorsey

There’s good news for the jobless and uninsured struggling in the pandemic. Among the flurry of executive orders President Biden signed last week was one granting the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) the ability to provide a Special Enrollment Period (SEP) for individuals and families to apply and enroll in the coverage they need, given the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. The SEP will be available to consumers in the 36 states served by health insurance Marketplaces that use the HealthCare.gov platform. To get the word out, CMS will conduct outreach activities to encourage eligible people to enroll in health coverage.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for Americans to have access to high-quality, affordable health care coverage,” said Tom Van Coverden, President and CEO of NACHC. “Health centers support opportunities and mechanisms to ensure that all Americans have the chance to sign up for health coverage – especially during a public health emergency.”

The effort kicks off February 15^th and continues through May 15, 2021. Marketplaces that use the HealthCare.gov platform will offer an SEP and will be open to all Marketplace-eligible consumers who are submitting a new application or updating an existing application. Consumers will be able to access the SEP through a variety of channels: through HealthCare.gov directly, the Marketplace call center, or direct enrollment channels.

Additionally, consumers can work with a network of over 50,000 agents and brokers who are registered with the Marketplace, along with over 8,000 trained assisters, ready to assist consumers with their application for coverage. In 2019, health centers employed over 4,400 enrollment assisters who provided nearly 5 million assists to individuals seeking affordable health care coverage. CMS plans a host of activities to get the word out and ensure a broad and diverse range of consumers are aware this is happening. Some consumers may already be eligible for other existing SEPs, Medicaid, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) – they can visit HealthCare.gov now to find out if they can enroll even before the new SEP.

For more information, visit: https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/2021-special-enrollment-period-response-covid-19-emergency.

For more information about the Health Insurance Marketplace®, visit: https://www.healthcare.gov/quick-guide/getting-marketplace-health-insurance/.

On its first full day in office, the Biden-Harris administration released a comprehensive document laying out its widely anticipated plan to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. As we expected, the plan makes numerous references to the central role that Community Health Centers will play in this effort, given their status as trusted health care providers serving communities hard hit by the pandemic, testing more than 7,730,000 patients and diverting non-acute COVID cases from overwhelmed hospitals. The national strategy also includes a welcome discussion of the need for additional funding to enable health centers to expand their vaccination activities.

“We’re excited to see the Biden administration moving so quickly to initiate a coordinated national strategy to fight the pandemic and the significant role it envisions for Community Health Centers,” said Dr. Ron Yee, NACHC’s Chief Medical Officer. “Community Health Centers are up to the task, including helping to administer COVID vaccines. They just need vaccines, supplies, appropriate reimbursement, and a well-functioning vaccine reporting system to support them in meeting the ambitious goals set out in the White House plan.”

At 198 pages, the White House plan is detailed. It includes the following specific goals where health centers are identified as having a key role:

Create as many venues as needed for people to be vaccinated.
Drive equity throughout the vaccination campaign and broader pandemic response.
Expand access to high-quality health care.

Of particular note is the plan’s description of a new federal partnership with health centers to accomplish the administration’s goal of creating vaccination venues that people trust:

“Launch new partnership with Federally Qualified Health Centers nationwide. Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) serve more than 30 million patients each year—one in 11 people nationwide. Many are people of color and individuals struggling to make ends meet. Given the critical role that these providers play in their communities, the federal government, through HRSA and CDC, will launch a new program to ensure that FQHCs can directly access vaccine supply where needed. At the same time, the Administration will encourage jurisdictions to engage health centers closely in their overall jurisdictional plans. And to ensure that health centers have the resources they need to successfully launch vaccination programs, HRSA will launch a new program to provide guidance, technical assistance and other resources to prepare and engage these providers nationwide.”

Read the full plan.

By Lathran J. Woodard, Chair of the Board, NACHC; Chief Executive Officer of the South Carolina Primary Health Care Association

This year’s observance of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday comes at an acutely painful time for our nation and for the Community Health Center Movement. We are many months into fighting a deadly pandemic that has exacted a heavy price on our communities. And just days ago, a mob of insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol, an act of violence and lawlessness that shocked our nation.

It also comes as our nation reckons with the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks, and the millions of men, women and children who have been targets of violence because of the color of their skin. As health care providers, we bear witness to the direct effects of violence, racism, stress, physical and mental abuse on the health and well-being of our patients, neighbors, friends, and family.

Our hearts are weary, and yet, the words of Dr. King in reflecting on the turbulence of his time, are relevant today. “We must accept finite disappointment,” he said, “but never lose infinite hope.”

As healers whose mission emerged from the Civil Rights Movement, our goal is clear: We dedicate ourselves to the task of trying even harder to eradicate poverty, illness, hate, bias, and brutality in our communities. We must continue our work to provide all people with a path out of illness, poverty, and disease and reject the racial bias embedded in our laws and policies that has held back Indigenous and people of color, especially Black Americans, in this country – not just in health care, but also in other arenas, including policing, education, and housing.

Last month, we sadly lost Dr. H. Jack Geiger, who shared Dr. King’s vision for justice and equity. Early in his career, Dr. Geiger promoted and led campaigns to end discrimination in hospital care and admission to medical schools. During the 1960s, as part of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, he organized medical students to provide care to Civil Rights workers protesting discrimination throughout the South. It was then that Dr. Geiger planted the seeds of the Community Health Center Movement, founding the nation’s first urban and rural health centers at Columbia Point, Boston, and Mound Bayou, Mississippi, in 1965. Today, the network of health centers serve 30 million people in more than 14,000 medically underserved communities located in every state, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Territories.

Our work to establish health equity is more important than ever as health centers prepare to help bring about the end of a pandemic through a massive vaccination effort in hard-hit medically underserved communities. And so, as we begin that task, the words of Dr. Geiger seem prescient for our time:

“Like all healers we strive to heal. Like most healers, we refuse to bow down to pestilence. But we have an understanding of pestilence that it is not merely biological. It is also social, political and economic. This is the pestilence we fight, along with the pestilence of biological agents and natural disease… It is not a reason for despair. It is not a reason for pessimism. It is the nature of what is best in us as human beings: to join the struggle, to build a life around it, to commit to it, to make sure that it will continue.”

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