The Rockefeller Foundation’s Equity Advisory Council outlines 20 actions to support vaccine and health equity in the transition from response to recovery
NEW YORK | November 14, 2022 – A panel of leading experts on vaccine equity is urging federal, state and local authorities to support and expand the significant progress that has been made to ensure equitable access to Covid-19 vaccinations. The 20 recommendations include the designation and formal inclusion of community-based organizations and workers (CBOs/CBWs) as essential members of the public health infrastructure. If implemented, these recommendations could help save lives in vulnerable communities hit hard by the pandemic and ensure communities are ready to respond to future outbreaks.
“Community health workers have been on the front lines of this pandemic, and yet too often they have been an afterthought in the public health community,” said Denise Smith, Equity Advisory Council Member and Executive Director of the National Association of Community Health Workers. “If we want to eliminate racial disparities in public health, we must designate community health workers as reliable and critical infrastructure workers, just like other health care personnel who are on the front lines during emergencies like the Covid-19 pandemic. “
The Rockefeller Foundation’s Equity Advisory Council, a 13-member panel of public health and equity experts representing diverse communities, noted that only a handful of CBOs working on access to and trust in testing, vaccines and treatments during the pandemic are considered part of the traditional health care or public health sectors. The rest are usually called only during crises.
“We must formally recognize and support our community-based organizations with both adequate funding and technical assistance,” said Rita Carreón, Equality Advisory Council Member and Vice President for Health at UnidosUS. “The pandemic highlighted how CBO staff were undercompensated and not prioritized to receive PPE, vaccines or Covid tests. We can and must do better.”
The Council created 20 evidence-based recommendations based on the basic understanding that vaccine equity begins at the community level and that efforts to build vaccine confidence and demand must be prioritized as much as efforts to build vaccine supply. To do this, federal, state, and local governments must invest in communities and CBOs for sustained engagement, ensure that community leaders are involved as leaders and designers in initiatives, support equity-focused data collection, and build communication teams that include community leaders who can continually adapt messages to meet local cultures and needs. Federal officials also need to do a better job of acknowledging uncertainty, telling stories and using visuals.
The Equity Advisory Council met regularly beginning in 2021 to advise and inform the Rockefeller Foundation’s grantmaking during its Equity First Vaccination Initiative (EVI). The foundation launched its $20 million EVI to help over 90 CBOs and partners scale hyper-local, community-led programs in five cities to improve access to vaccines and accurate information.
“EVI has been extremely successful in showing us how hands-on and hyper-local engagement can lead to greater vaccine equity,” said Greg Johnson, Managing Director of the US Equity and Economic Opportunity Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation. “The Rockefeller Foundation is already using what we’ve learned as we implement our Global Vaccine Initiative to accelerate global vaccine equity, and I hope that stakeholders can use these recommendations to support both ongoing vaccine equity and more broad health equity issues here in the United States as well.”
The Rockefeller Foundation also supported an additional EVI analysis conducted by the RAND Corporation in August, which called for hyper-local engagement as a key to promoting vaccination equity, as well as a report by researchers at Brown University’s School of Public Health. in September. which recommended structural public health changes and significant investment in vaccine demand generation. The EVI ran from April 2021 to April 2022. The Brown University School of Public Health served as the secretariat for the Council.
The 13 members of the Capital Advisory Council are listed here.
About The Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a pioneering philanthropy built on collaborative partnerships at the frontiers of science, technology and innovation that enable individuals, families and communities to thrive. We work to promote the well-being of humanity and make opportunity universal and sustainable. Our focus is on scaling renewable energy for all, stimulating economic mobility and ensuring equitable access to health care and nutritious food. For more information, sign up for our newsletter at rockefellerfoundation.org and follow us on Twitter @RockefellerFdn.
Media contacts
Davina Dukuly
The Rockefeller Foundation
[email protected]
+1 (212) 852-0000
Moytrayee Guha
Brown University School of Public Health
[email protected]
+1 (857) 498-2746
