‘¡Vacúnate!’: Kansas City-area officials rush to vaccinate Hispanics against COVID-19
Editor’s note: Some interviews for this piece were conducted in Spanish and have been translated into English. Para leer una versión de este artículo en español, haz clic aquí.
For months, Guadalupe Abelino waited as the COVID-19 vaccine was rolled out across the Kansas City metro area.
The 40-year-old mother of three, a native of Veracruz, Mexico, had several concerns when the vaccine first became publicly available. They were basic, but vital.
What would happen if she and her children did get vaccinated? What side effects would occur? The two times one of her sons received the flu shot, he had a bad reaction — would that happen again?
“There were a lot of questions that were being asked,” Abelino said.
But after more than four months of the vaccine being available — and after Abelino, her husband and their three children all got COVID-19 in November — she and her oldest son drove to Swope Health West clinic in Kansas City, Kansas, to get their first dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
“We decided to get it, mainly for my kids,” Abelino said.
In the Kansas City metro area, disparities in vaccination rates among Hispanic communities are stark. In Wyandotte County, 35% of residents have been fully vaccinated and 41% have received at least one dose, according to Wyandotte’s Resident Vaccine Data. But for Hispanics in the county, the number is just 27% who have been fully vaccinated.
“We’re still very concerned that our people aren’t getting vaccinated and they’re the ones affected the most,” said Marielena Marroquin, community engagement manager at Swope Health Services.
The low vaccination rate is concerning for several reasons: With a low vaccine rate, transmission of COVID-19 within the community will continue, said Elizabeth Groenweghe, chief epidemiologist for the Unified Government Public Health Department.
As the virus spreads, it will have more opportunities to mutate and create new variants — like the highly-contagious delta variant. A low vaccination rate will help prolong a pandemic that has already disproportionately impacted Hispanic and Black people.
For several months, COVID-19 cases had decreased across the metro. But over the last several weeks, with vaccine rates still low, cases have surged. In the last week the metro added 5,000 new cases.
The vaccine event at Swope Health was conducted with support from Harvesters, KanCare, Aetna Better Health of Kansas and El Centro, a nonprofit organization serving the Hispanic and Latino community in Wyandotte County. Staffers with El Centro handed out t-shirts that said “¡Vacúnate! (Get vaccinated!). All of it a push to get more Hispanics in the Kansas City metro area vaccinated.
Hispanics are more likely to have underlying health conditions like diabetes, obesity and asthma, according to a study by the University of Miami that published in 2020. Hispanics are also more likely to work in settings that put them more at risk since they typically cannot afford to take time off, the study said.
“We know that COVID, when it attacks the Hispanic population, the Hispanic population has a much higher morbidity, mortality (rate) from the infection itself,” Dr. Mario Castro, chief pulmonologist at the University of Kansas Health Systems said.
The recent rise in hospitalizations can be attributed to the number of people who aren’t yet fully vaccinated. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden said 95% of those who are hospitalized haven’t been vaccinated.
“The severe illness is very preventable by the current vaccines that we have an abundance off right now,” Castro said.
Why not get vaccinated?
The low vaccination rate within the community can’t just be attributed to people not wanting to get vaccinated. Nationally, a third of unvaccinated Hispanic adults say they want to get the shot as soon as possible, which is about twice as many than unvaccinated Black and white adults, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“It could be fear,” said Erica Andrade, chief programming officer at El Centro and a member of JUNTOS Center for Latino Health at KU Medical Center. But some may need more information. and others may not have had time to get vaccinated, she added.
In order to look into what specific problems and obstacles existed for individuals and their families, Andrade asked every staff member at El Centro to ask new and current clients if they had received the vaccine — and if not, why not? She then asks her staff to record the responses and reasons on excel sheets.
It was a way for her to dig deep into the biggest reasons and figure out how to solve them.
Once you have that conversation and they start telling you their fears and you’re able to tell them, ‘Oh well actually science shows this or this is information I have on that topic,’” Andrade said.
El Centro started its own tracking about two weeks ago. Even with all the research available, Andrade was surprised by the number of clients who hadn’t been vaccinated. It was higher than she’d hoped. About 40% of El Centro’s clients said they have not been vaccinated, Andrade said. The two biggest reasons she’s noticed for not getting vaccinated is fear and a lack of information.
After having conversations with their clients — assuring them that the vaccine is safe, that it’s free and one doesn’t need health insurance to get it — about 65% of those who haven’t been vaccinated agreed to sign up to get vaccinated, Andrade said.
The language barrier
When Joel Moreno, 17, would get on social media, he saw rumors about the side effects and adverse reactions from the COVID-19 vaccine. Usually, the information was in Spanish — his native language. Often, Moreno didn’t know if it was true or false.
“There’s a lot of rumors on the internet that kind of makes you, I don’t know, be against the vaccine,” Moreno said. “I don’t know if it was false, but there were a lot of things saying like: They made the vaccine for this reason or that reason. And sometimes one will believe that and other times not believe it.”
A big factor in the low vaccination rate among Hispanics is the language barrier that exists. Some households may only have native Spanish speakers who don’t understand the information about the vaccine if it’s only accessible in English.
Experts said it’s hard to disseminate the correct information about the vaccine.
In Kansas City, Kansas, 22% of adults and 30% of kids speak Spanish at home, according to census data. Both are more than double the rate of the greater Kansas City metro area.
“Language plays a big part in guaranteeing equal access to information about vaccines,” said Mariana Ramirez Mantilla, the director of JUNTOS Center for Advancing Latino Health at KU Medical Center. “There’s a lot of misinformation in our community, a lot of fear. People receive information, not just from the United States, but from other countries — a country of origin — and it’s really important that our people have access to dependable information from institutions and local officials so they can make informed decisions, based on facts and not myths.”
One of the ways JUNTOS is trying to help publish information in Spanish is by taking the information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the World Health Organization about the vaccines and translating to native Spanish speakers, Ramirez Mantilla said.
Another push is making sure that community and religious leaders can speak to people about the vaccine. It’s important, Ramirez Mantilla said, that people can get information from people whom they already know and trust.
“A lot of the Latino population doesn’t have health insurance, and some of them are undocumented, so they’ve lived their lives trying to go undetected,” she said. “But now we’re asking them to come and give us their personal information — not just for the vaccine but for the (COVID-19) test. All of those are risks. We can’t erase the history of discrimination and the problems that our community has suffered and ask them to give their trust for one night.”
JUNTOS has made a big push on social media, using Facebook Live with medical professionals, and also using WhatsApp. They’ve also been sending out messages about the vaccine through Univision and Telemundo.
Ramirez Mantilla wants people to know that this push to get vaccinated requires a push from everyone. We all have to be responsible for one another, she said, especially with the rise of new variants.
“There are a lot of organizations behind this effort,” Ramirez Mantilla said. “So we’re all playing a part in this and we need every person to take responsibility, not just for themselves, but for their loved ones.”
Where you can get vaccinated
If you haven’t been vaccinated yet, there are several resources that can help you get the vaccine.
You can go to vaccines.gov and search for vaccines by zip code in your area. The search option will give you a list of locations that offer vaccines, the location’s hours, if walk-ins are available and the phone number.
If you need a free ride to get the vaccine, Lyft and Uber are offering free and discounted rides to get vaccinated. You can click here to access Lyft’s website. You can call Uber at (855) 921-0033.
If you live in Wyandotte County, you can go to the website Wycovaccines.org (There is a Spanish-version of the website: Click here). You can also call 311.
If you live in Missouri, you can go to covidvaccine.mo.gov to find a vaccine event or location near you. You can also go to the website vaccinatekc.org to find locations and vaccination events. You can access a Spanish version of the website by clicking here.