Check out the May RIM Newsletter here.
Bexar County’s Community Health Leadership is a non-profit in San Antonio, operating for over 20 years working closely to address RIM community needs. At the onset of the pandemic, Bexar shifted focus to COVID-19 response programs such as pop-up vaccination clinics to increase vaccine uptake. In partnership with NACCHO, Bexar Health facilitated a collective of eight Community Based Organizations (CBO) partners to serve RIM populations as trusted messengers by coordinating resources and hosting pop-up clinics in collaboration with clinical partners. Community partners such as ImmSchools, Presentation Ministry Center, Empower House, The Hope for International Community Development, Mexican American Unity Council, and American Organization for Immigrants have championed RIM focused COVID-19 programing, while Culturingua and Razakaar have also played a key role in supporting resettlement of Afghan refugees.
Jordan Mcilveen, the Community Information & Data Manager spoke on “leveraging existing relationships with CBOs as the foundation for the reconvening and reorganizing of the NACCHO supported vaccine drive”.
Bexar County’s Community Health Leadership has made greats strides in improving community acceptability of vaccines by striving to overcome language barriers to address gaps in translated material needs to fully capture non-English as a Second Language-(ESL) populations by distributing COVID-19 Safety Kits (including cards with local vaccine and testing, PPE and affordable health insurance information) in Arabic and Spanish. Read more about the organization here.
