UC Merced Magazine | Volume XVIII, Issue IV

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Immediate and Ongoing It can take time for the vital work UC Merced researchers do to make its way into the community at large. But sometimes, the e ects are immediate and even lifesaving. In addition to providing more than 1,300 potentially lifesaving vaccinations and over 32,000 COVID-19 rapid tests, the pop-up events served another purpose: the building of relationships with a group of people who don’t regularly trust, or interact with, government o cials. “Our goal was establishing trust and providing education,” Kuzak said. “ e rst few ea market events we attended, we brought general information and GVHC outreach teams joined the nurses in chatting with people to gain their trust. Once they saw us there every week, the nurses started to have lines of people. People we met were thankful to see us there and appreciative.” Corchado said while the vaccinations and health information are vital, it was getting to know the people that made the project work. “It was a community we built at the ea market,” Corchado said. “ e vendor next to us sold speakers and he became our deejay, encouraging people to come get vaccinated. Other vendors would bring us something to drink. And toward the end, they’d ask, “Are you “ is was the beginning of a multi-year collaboration,” Burke said. e team has since distributed home tests and information about COVID and other issues, including extreme heat and water conservation. ey are at the ea market the last weekend of each month. “I’m truly grateful for what we’ve built,” Corchado said. “ ere is no doubt we helped save people’s lives.” coming back?’” Indeed, they are.

Health Centers’ director of nursing. “Our partnership with UC Merced was invaluable. We were brought in to administer COVID-19 vaccines to the students during the beginning of each quarter, and we worked with faculty and students to o er information as broadly as possible at di erent community gatherings — even at ea markets,” Kuzak said. Information and Access It wasn’t just about getting shots into arms. “We wanted to address inequities in access to information,” Burke said. Much of what was available early on was in English or required navigating websites to access. “We went into communities that hadn’t been a part of rollouts, that didn’t have major testing sites or vaccination events.” At Cultiva la Salud, the sta quickly realized that even when information and vaccines were available, they weren’t easily accessible to many of the people the organization serves. “ e system to access vaccinations was not created to support our most vulnerable community,” said program Director Claudia Corchado. ere were people who didn’t have access to vaccines via the system and others who didn’t trust entering their information into it. “It was a huge challenge to our community residents, especially to our elders and immigrant residents.” “We were honored Nancy Burke reached out to partner in this endeavor and to establish a system built on trust to serve our community residents most in need,” she said. “We knew we were going to be able to create a delivery system that would bring services directly to the most vulnerable.” e team quickly homed in on the idea of creating pop-up vaccine clinics at the Merced and Atwater ea and farmers markets. ese markets are a vital source of food and goods for many in the underserved communities around Merced and Atwater.

“Where can we go where people are already there? And where we think people will come back for the booster?” Burke said. ey started with outreach to the vendors selling at the ea markets. ese are people who are considered essential workers — many of them farmworkers and small-scale farmers — and who would be back at the market for booster shots simply because their livelihoods depended on it. e student volunteers and promotoras got creative in getting the vaccines into arms.

Some vendors were the sole workers at their booths, so promotoras took over for them brie y while they visited the vaccine booth. When even that wasn’t feasible, the group put together a cart and went from vendor to vendor to provide the vaccines. “We made it personal and built a sense of family,” Corchado said. “Elders would pull up chairs and chitchat. We would hold their hands if they needed comforting, provide encouragement and earn their trust. I don’t think they would have gotten that at drive-up pharmacies.”

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