HEALTH
Community Leaders in Cicero Step Up to Address Vaccination Disparities A look at vaccination efforts in west suburban Cicero, Berwyn, and Stickney. BY ABEL RODRÍGUEZ, CICERO INDEPENDIENTE
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n a chilly day in early May, Catalina Prado, Erika Saucedo, and Yesenia Mata gathered outside El Porvenir grocery store in Cicero with care packages full of personal protective equipment and flyers for an upcoming vaccination event. The three women are part of the health navigators team with Family Focus, a non-profit with offices in Chicago, Cicero, and various suburbs in northeastern Illinois. Over the past few months the team has been encouraging Latinx community members to get vaccinated. Located west of the City of Chicago, Cicero is one of the largest suburbs in Cook County and is home to a mostly working-class, Mexican population, many of whom are essential workers who had no choice but to work through the pandemic. For many of them, the vaccine brought on a glimmer of hope but getting one was not easy. “Many people don't know how to use technology and don’t know how to get an appointment and have had to travel far to get a vaccine,” said Prado. This is why she became a navigator and chose to talk to people in person outside the grocery store. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Cicero has led the west suburbs in confirmed cases of COVID-19. It wasn’t until February 2021 that cases in Cicero finally dropped below the Cook County average. 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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Yet local efforts to mitigate the spread of the pandemic, such as access to testing and vaccination, lagged behind other municipalities in Cook County. Data analysis reveals that the majority of vaccines distributed by the Cicero Health Department in January and February were not going to Cicero residents and a Cicero Independiente investigation revealed that federal monies meant to alleviate needs created by the pandemic ILLUSTRATION BY JENNIFER CHAVEZ
went instead to pay police salaries. Although vaccination rates have improved since then, Cicero still lags behind the Cook County averages for fully and partially vaccinated individuals. Cicero Independiente spoke to residents, service providers, public health officials, and local leaders, like Prado, to reflect on how they have come together to address local health disparities exacerbated by COVID.
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icero was one of the first municipalities in Cook County to adopt a mask mandate, in April 2020, and for months remained as the suburb with the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. This included an early outbreak at City View, a large nursing home with over 200 confirmed COVID cases. Nursing staff and union representatives at City View repeatedly said they were not provided
