Mississippi to distribute COVID-19 vaccine doses to Coast Vietnamese community
The Mississippi health department has set aside 300 vaccine doses for the Coast’s Vietnamese community to be distributed at the Coast Coliseum on March 17.
Community organizations like Boat People SOS, the Vietnamese Martyrs Church and the Buddhist temple Chua Van Duc are now working to get people signed up for appointments. The deadline to sign up is this Friday, March 4.
“The phone has been ringing off the hook for the past day,” said Daniel Le, the Biloxi branch manager of Boat People SOS, a national nonprofit that serves Vietnamese Americans.
Vietnamese people who are less likely to speak English or use computers have struggled to get vaccine appointments, Le said. Since distribution began, his organization has been helping people sign up for appointments, but they’ve been battling for a limited number of spots while also struggling against a language barrier and sometimes limited technology access.
The online sign-up system at covidvaccine.umc.edu does not have a Vietnamese translation option (though it does offer sign-ups in Spanish). The hotline to make an appointment over the phone has added Vietnamese interpreters, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said during a virtual meeting for Mississippi’s Vietnamese community.
As of Feb. 12, data from the health department provided to the Sun Herald showed that Asian people had received just 1.2% of vaccines distributed in Harrison County, though census data shows 2.9% of Harrison County residents are Asian. (Health department statistics do not include national origin information.)
Le and other community advocates, like MSDH outreach coordinator Coi Nguyen, had been advocating for a specific allocation for the Vietnamese community for weeks. The event at the Coast Coliseum will improve access for the community, Le said.
His team will also be at the Coliseum that day to offer interpretation assistance.
“By working with the department, we are able to facilitate and coordinate all of the paperwork, the documentation they need,” he said. “So when the client drives up to get the shot, all they have to do is just verify who they are.”
A new Health Equity Response Team
The allocation of COVID-19 vaccine doses for the Coast’s Vietnamese community, and partnership with local organizations to spread the word and get people signed up, is part of a much broader effort by the health department’s Health Equity Response Team.
The team is working to understand and address the factors affecting vaccine access among the state’s minority communities, including Black, Latino and Vietnamese Mississippians.
The team also has coordinated COVID-19 testing events at Chua Van Duc, where team members from Jackson join local Vietnamese community members to offer testing and COVID-19 information in Vietnamese.
Since vaccine distribution began, the team has been working to provide information about the vaccine in Spanish and Vietnamese, and held virtual meetings in both languages.
Bringing vaccines to where they’re needed
Often, it’s important to meet people where they are, the state and clinics have found.
Memorial Hospital was able to distribute more than 700 vaccines mostly to Black residents through a one-day event at Isiah Fredericks Community Center in North Gulfport. (State data pulled on Feb. 12, a few days after the event, showed Black people had received just 8.8% of vaccines in Harrison County at that point.)
The Rev. John Thang Pham invited the Coastal Family Health Center to distribute vaccines at his church, Vietnamese Martyrs, in Biloxi. Some of his congregation members don’t speak English, and others live within walking distance of the church and don’t often leave their neighborhood, he said, so the thought of navigating the health department’s sign-up system was daunting.
“I’ve got to take care of my sheep,” he said. “The young people can Google. But they’re older. So it’s good to have it in church. It’s very convenient for them.”
At the event on Monday, 80 people received the vaccine, almost all of them Vietnamese, said Coastal Family communications director Emily Burke.
Burke said that Coastal Family has been receiving shipments of the vaccine about every two weeks. The number of doses can range from 500 to 2,500. Some are allocated to Coastal Family’s brick-and-mortar clinics, and others go to their mobile distribution units.
“What we have left... we try to get into areas of the most need,” Burke said.
For events like the one at Vietnamese Martyrs Church, she said, Coastal Family doesn’t advertise on its usual channels. Instead, they rely on word of mouth.
When a vaccination event is held at a community gathering spot with the buy-in of community leaders, that strategy works well.
“We want to be in areas convenient to them,” Burke said of racial minority communities that have received disproportionately few vaccines. “We have to get in the areas where they are.”
Coastal Family’s vaccine supply is unpredictable, so planning events in advance is a challenge. But Burke said the center hopes to hold distributions with community partners in Moss Point and Gulfport in the next few weeks.
An event with El Pueblo, a Biloxi-based nonprofit that serves the Coast’s Latino immigrant community, is also in the works, as is a partnership with one of the local organizations that serves homeless people on the Coast.
This story was originally published March 3, 2021 at 5:50 AM.
