Key partners: ADRC, senior housing buildings, volunteers

               Ethos, one of three Area Agencies on Aging (AAA) serving the city of Boston and a member of the Boston Aging and Disability Resource Consortium (ADRC), coordinated four vaccination clinics serving the Haitian Community in January and February of 2021 at senior housing sites the Hyde Park and Mattapan, two Boston neighborhoods with large Haitian communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19.  As of July, Mattapan had the lowest vaccination rate in the city—39 percent—compared with 55 percent for the city as a whole.

The clinics facilitated vaccinations for 64 Haitian speaking older adults.  Fifty-one received direct assistance from ADRC-affiliated staff and volunteers.  Thirteen attended the event and received vaccinations, but were fluent in English and did not need assistance with reading or filling out forms.  Two declined the vaccine due to admonitions from their family.

               The events were promoted by the housing sites, but people from the surrounding neighborhood attended as well.  The clinics were staffed by an Options Counselor from the ADRC fluent in Haitian Creole, as well as volunteers from the AAA, including a receptionist who happens to speak Haitian Creole, and a local high school student.  Participants were also made aware of other services available through the ADRC.  One participant received assistance with a letter from a health provider that she needed translated.

Challenges and Best Practices

Allow plenty of time

               The forms include lots of questions and take a long time to translate.  Additionally, many participants are socially isolated and welcome the clinics as an opportunity for social engagement, so be prepared to include extra time for non-essential conversation.  “My people like to talk,” the Options Counselor who coordinated the clinics noted.

Vet your volunteers

               While the teenage volunteer speaks Haitian Creole at home with her parents, she is not a native speaker and was not prepared to converse with native speakers on an unfamiliar topic.  Fortunately, she was sufficiently familiar with the language to direct participants to the Options Counselor who is fluent in Haitian Creole.

Procure/develop materials

               Clinic organizers believe that the event would have reached more people if there had been promotional and educational materials available in Haitian Creole.  Even when materials are available, there is a low rate of literacy in any language among older Haitian’s, so be prepared to translate verbally.

Continue and increase public education campaigns

               As with the United States as a whole, there are widely held perceptions among the Haitian community that COVID is not as widespread or as lethal as public health officials or the media describe, or that it can be cured without approved medical interventions.  Haiti has a very low rate of infection, which fuels a belief among many Haitian Americans in this particular community that the disease is rare.  The vaccine is viewed by many as a “white people’s vaccine” and there is a strong reluctance to wearing masks and a distrust of people who do so.

This profile serves as a great example of leveraging partnerships with housing communities for vaccine outreach as outlined in the recent bulletin from Housing and Urban Development and Health and Human Services (HUD/HHS): HUD and HHS's Joint Effort for Local Housing/Health Partnerships. This is also a great example of how ADRCs can play a critical role in reaching minority and underserved populations – both addressing equity and building vaccine confide