The city of Providence and Lotus Noire Health held a health justice vaccine clinic at the Scalabrini Dukcevich Center on Monday. Masters students from the School of Public Health volunteered by checking in patients, providing translation services, and answering questions from community members about the vaccination process.
The clinic is located in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Providence. The brick building serves the community in many different functions, including educational work, COVID testing, legal services, and women’s health services. Inside, patients queue to check-in in the waiting area and receive COVID tests and vaccines in a separate room. According to volunteer Leonardo Arriola GS, a student on the MPH program, the clinic can vaccinate around 15 to 20 people in its three hours of operation. The clinic is only open on a few Monday evenings.
The community served is part of Providence County, which has the lowest vaccination rates in the state according to the Rhode Island COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker. Currently, 66.34% of the population in Providence County is at least partially vaccinated and 59.91% are fully vaccinated. In a district with over 600,000 inhabitants, this means that over 200,000 people in the region are unprotected against COVID. Blaise Rein, the Mayor’s Center for City Services COVID Response Group representative, said the clinic “had quite a number of Brown’s students volunteer with us during the pandemic,” including some from the MPH program.
One of these students, Sara Riosmendez GS, was on her third shift at the clinic on Monday. She works as a translator, checks in parishioners and fills out their vaccination cards. “These are focused clinics,” she said. “I think pretty much everyone who wanted to get vaccinated was vaccinated, so (the clinic is) geared towards overcoming misinformation and doing it through (vaccination centers) who … have a trusting relationship with the community.”
She found that while the clinics are busy every day, there are still hurdles to getting the community vaccinated. “The highest unvaccinated rates are usually in Latin American and black communities. And it is very understandable with the history of the exploitation of the medical facilities in these communities. I think it’s just about overcoming this misinformation and fear that is inherent in a lot of trauma, ”said Riosmendez.
Another Brown MPH student, Marcell Coleman GS, believes the community clinic provides “where our government and service programs do not … focus on priority but marginalized communities.” Coleman said the volunteers addressed misinformation in open discussions with patients. “We literally have conversations with people in the community who keep coming and saying that their sister or brother will not be vaccinated and they will come back and be inspired by their experience.”
Arriola has been volunteering at the clinic for three weeks. As a Spanish and Portuguese speaker, Arriola noted that “a huge Latino population comes to these clinics”.
“I come to serve my community,” said Arriola. He encourages other multilingual students to get involved in reaching more communities by breaking the language barrier in the medical field. Temperance Taylor, a nurse and parishioner, administers the vaccination and testing program for the clinic. Her goal for the clinic is to “go into the neighborhoods … and offer them what they need, not what I think they need”.
One focus of the clinic is to create a comfortable environment, Taylor said. “We all love what we do,” she says. “Everyone learns or teaches or grows in some way … The people who are being vaccinated now are only being vaccinated now because they have to or because they are afraid. For that we have to be sensitive and love these people … They are brave when they come here. “
source https://www.bisayanews.com/2021/09/21/mph-students-volunteer-at-pvd-health-equity-vaccine-clinic/
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