LYNN — Lynn Community Health Center plans to use its latest round of vaccine-equity funding from the state to try to get more shots into the arms of the city’s children, CEO Dr. Kiame Mahaniah said.
Lynn was one of 42 community health centers to receive $3.1 million in funding through the Massachusetts Vaccine Equity Initiative, which is aimed at increasing awareness and access to the COVID-19 vaccine and mitigating the impacts of the pandemic, according to the Baker-Polito administration.
The funds are targeted toward organizations working in communities that have been hardest hit by the pandemic.
“It’s to help in situations like ours that are serving communities of color and underserved communities,” said Mahaniah, explaining that these cities often include a large number of undocumented immigrants and people who prefer to speak a language other than English.
Mahaniah said the grants are meant to help underserved communities increase their vaccination rates. Lynn Community Health Center (LCHC) has received past funding through this initiative, which was used to increase vaccination rates among its adult patients. This latest grant of approximately $100,000 will be targeted toward its youngest patients, he said.
“We are particularly interested in using this funding for vaccines for kids,” said Mahaniah.
He said the health center has done well with vaccinating its adult patients, 68 percent of whom have received full shots. However, numbers for its child patients are much lower, at 20 percent for the 5-11 age group, as of last week, he said. This is nearly 30 points lower than the state average for fully vaccinated children, which is 49 percent, as of April 6, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“We really want to figure out how to make contact,” said Mahaniah.
Toward that end, this funding will be used in two ways: to conduct outreach activities to raise awareness for the importance of children getting vaccinated, and to hold vaccine clinics for this age group, he said.
LCHC plans to work with its community partners that serve a large number of children, such as church agencies, the YMCA, and LEO, Inc., to hold outreach events. The hope, Mahaniah said, is to gauge interest and answer any questions that families may have during these events, with the ultimate goal of returning to host a vaccine clinic for the children of these families.
“We’re hoping to reach as many agencies that serve kids as possible,” said Mahaniah. “Several lessons that we learned (over) the past two years with COVID, for our population in Lynn, is if we want people to be vaccinated, we have to be in it for the long term.”
Citing the fact that the health center is still administering 30 to 50 first-time vaccine doses to its adult patients per week, Mahaniah said LCHC anticipates that this effort for its youngest patients will take a while to ramp up.
“If we stay and are able to offer convenient locations for people to get vaccinations — where people are praying, playing and doing their hobbies — if we’re there for the long term, we will eventually be able to vaccinate a large number of kids,” he said. “We’re in it for the long term.”
Last week’s grants — $4.5 million in total to community organizations including health centers, faith-based organizations, and education centers— are the result of a major funding award from the CDC to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Baker-Polito administration said.
These funds build on the state’s investment to increase vaccine awareness and acceptance by distributing grants to community organizations that work closely with populations most disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, the administration said.
“These trusted community-based organizations know their communities best,” said state Public Health Commissioner Margret Cooke. “They use their knowledge and relationships to expand the efforts of our Vaccine Equity Initiative by helping address the unique health-equity needs of the communities and populations they serve — needs that have been exacerbated by COVID-19.”
