Crafting Successful State-Level Public Health Interventions to Vaccinate Homeless Populations During COVID-19

As a medical student, I (P. K. M.) was interested in approaching the COVID-19 public health crisis from an equity lens to ensure that vulnerable populations had access to vaccinations. I reached out and began working with a physician in Cook County who was a member of an Illinois Department of Publi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of public health (1971) 2022-04, Vol.112 (4), p.601-603
Main Authors: Mathur, Priyanka K, Dolgin, Natasha
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affordable housing
Chronic illnesses
Collaboration
Community
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
COVID-19 - prevention & control
COVID-19 vaccines
Departments
Disease transmission
Education
Health care
Health disparities
Health facilities
Health Policy
Health services
Homeless people
Homelessness
Humans
Ill-Housed Persons
Immunization
Immunization/Vaccines
Inequality
Learning
Medical students
Medicine
Population
Populations
Public Health
Public health departments
Public Health Practice
Reflecting on Healh Inequities
Shelters
Trust
Urban development
Vaccination
Vaccines
Working groups
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Summary:As a medical student, I (P. K. M.) was interested in approaching the COVID-19 public health crisis from an equity lens to ensure that vulnerable populations had access to vaccinations. I reached out and began working with a physician in Cook County who was a member of an Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) working group seekingto vaccinate homeless populations throughout the state. As Cook County and the Chicago Department of Public Health embarked on groundbreaking and comprehensive initiatives to reach their dense metropolitan homeless populations, the IDPH working group focus was on statewide interventions. In the end, we ensured that all shelters in Illinois had access to COVID-19 vaccines and provided education and outreach, support, and events for any shelters that needed help.There are several lessons I have learned about addressing health care inequities from my work on the IDPH homeless vaccination initiative, as described in the sections to follow.
ISSN:0090-0036
1541-0048
DOI:10.2105/AJPH.2022.306719