UC Merced Magazine | Volume XVIII, Issue IV

Quick Response, Teamwork Gets immunizations and health information to Underserved People Vaccinating the Valley

Cover Story

A nurse prepares vaccines while promotoras gather health information to be shared at the Merced flea/farmers’ market at the Merced County Fairgrounds.

By Patty Guerra Most people in the area’s

“ ey wanted to channel funds to the areas hardest-hit by COVID-19,” Burke said. “We responded to this call within two weeks with an 11-site proposal.” A consortium led by UCLA that included UC campuses in Merced, Davis, Riverside, Irvine and San Francisco, along with Scripps Health and Stanford University, worked together on the program. Burke collaborated with Cultiva la Salud in Merced, which has an active network of promotoras, or community health workers, Golden Valley Health Centers, a nonpro t health services provider, and the Merced County Department of Public Health to get vaccines and information where it needed to go the fastest. Promotoras are residents who work as liaisons between hard-to-reach community members and health care services. ey are o en able to gain the trust of people in the community and explain for lay people what health care providers are trying to do and why it is important. “ e start of the COVID-19 pandemic was a stressful time. We were working very hard to set up testing sites throughout the (San Joaquin) Valley, get information out to residents and protect the community,” said Stacey Kuzak, Golden Valley

underserved communities go to local ea markets and farmers markets to get necessary items and fresh food. ey don't go to get lifesaving vaccines. But that all changed when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. UC Merced public health Professor Nancy Burke has been part of a statewide e ort that worked swi ly to address inequitable access to information, education, testing and vaccines, through a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). e award, part of the NIH Community Engaged Alliance Against COVID-19 Disparities, was designed to support community-university partnerships that were poised to respond.

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