A team from Loma Linda University honored for its work promoting vaccine equity says there’s still much work to be done.
In January, the Inland Empire Concerned African American Churches honored the group of eight faculty and staff members for their efforts to ensure COVID-19 vaccine equity in the local community.
“The Dorothy Inghram Trailblazer award is presented to those whose tenacity in the face of opposition allowed them to blaze new paths in areas that impact the community in a positive matter,” said Bishop Kelvin Simmons, president of IECAAC, in a news release. “We selected this brilliant team of Loma Linda University great minds because their efforts to ensure vaccination equity was a ‘trailblazing’ move for our community.”
Honoree Jacinda Abdul-Mutakabbir, an assistant professor in the School of Pharmacy, said the equity work started early in the public coronavirus vaccine rollout a year ago.
At that point the university had the largest mass vaccination site in San Bernardino County where 1,000 to 1,900 individuals were vaccinated per day.
On one particular day in February 2021, more than 17,000 San Bernardino County community members were vaccinated, but only 35 of them were Black residents.
“From there we knew that we had work to do in getting individuals of racially and ethnically minoritized groups vaccinated,” Abdul-Mutakabbir said in an email.
The university worked with groups such as IECAAC and the Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement to hold clinics in the Black community. They held vaccine townhalls to answer questions, and then the churches became vaccination sites for university students and community health workers to complete the effort.
“We then replicated these efforts in areas majorly populated by Hispanic/Latino individuals with these efforts supported and facilitated relationship with El Sol and Hispanic/Latino faith leaders,” Abdul-Mutakabbir wrote. “These community vaccination clinics have resulted in the vaccination of over 2,500 racially and ethnically minoritized individuals.”
Now the university is working to provide booster doses to minority communities.
“There will always be work that needs to be done to ensure health equity,” Abdul-Mutakabbir said.
The COVID-19 vaccines, she added, “are just our stepping stone in creating the necessary trustworthy relationships between academic institutions and the community.”
The group hopes to scale up efforts to include other vaccinations, such as for flu, as members of minority communities are less likely to have received those as well, she said.
Other Trailblazer honorees on the team included university President Dr. Richard H. Hart; Faculty Medical Group President Dr. Ricardo Peverini; Juan Carlos Belliard, with the School of Public Health; Bridgette Peteet with the School of Behavioral Health; Dr. Jennifer Veltman, with the School of Medicine; and Kiema Jones, a process improvement specialist with Faculty Medical Group.
The award is named after Dorothy Inghram, the county’s first Black school teacher. In 1953, Inghram became the first African American in the state to become a school superintendent.
Abdul-Mutakabbir said she is “beyond honored” to receive the award and is committed to the relationships that have been built with faith leaders and the community at large.
“I am so incredibly proud of the students (who helped) for being dedicated to serving the community as well and for being so enthusiastic about tangible opportunities to promote health equity,” she said. “Being a part of these community vaccination clinics have truly brought meaning to my career and life.”
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