BATTLES BEING WAGED TO OVERCOME VACCINE HESITANCY Written by Robert C. Jones Jr. Published on April 30, 2021 Category: Faculty, Secondary Faculty, Students, Service As more and more vaccines are being administered, the push is on to convince everyone to get protected. Eliminating barriers to health care and ramping up educational efforts are just some of the ways to get more people to get the shot, University of Miami researchers say. It’s not that McKenzi Payne wants to frighten the young men to whom she helps administer health screenings at Miami-area barbershops. But she can’t think of a better way to convince them to get the COVID-19 vaccine than to relate some of the heartbreaking stories she has experienced as an emergency room technician at Jackson North Medical Center. “I’ve seen what the virus can do to the human body, the way it can destroy families,” Payne, a master’s degree
student in public health sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said one recent Saturday at Urgent Cutz barbershop in Liberty City, where she and first-year medical student Melissa Blake conducted free blood pressure screenings as part of the Shop Docs initiative. “I’ve seen people separated from their families in the darkest moments of their lives,” Payne said. “And I’ve seen patients walk into the ER complaining of shortness of breath, and by the time my shift was over, they were intubated.” She can’t say for certain if the strategy works. What’s important, though, is that the effort to persuade more people to get vaccinated, especially the young who don’t fear the virus, needs to be made, she said. OUTREACH EFFORTS With more than 140 million people in the United States 18 or older now
having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, or 54.9 percent of the total adult population, everyone from health care workers to community activists are employing a multitude of strategies to combat the last few pockets of vaccine hesitancy, racing against time—and the variants—to dispel the rumors and persuade doubters that the inoculations are safe and effective. Through a National Institutes of Health-funded outreach project, Dr. Olveen Carrasquillo, a Miller School physician and his team, have taken to the radio waves and the internet to spread the message about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. They are also conducting online focus groups to learn why certain segments of Miami-Dade County’s population are distrustful of the shots. “We listen to their concerns and try to meet them halfway. We still get questions about the long-term safety of the vaccines and if they affect preg-
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