EAU CLAIRE — Mirroring the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on people of color in Eau Claire County, as of May, people of color are less likely to have gotten a COVID-19 vaccine than white people throughout the Chippewa Valley.
Experts say language barriers, mistrust of the health care system and a lack of transportation and internet access is holding racial and ethnic minority communities back from accessing the vaccine at greater levels.
Black people and other people of color are bearing a disproportionate impact of the novel co…
“It is something we were afraid of, and expecting,” said Pa Thao of Eau Claire, who is executive director of the nonprofit Black and Brown Womyn Power Coalition and former director of the Eau Claire Area Hmong Mutual Assistance Association.
About 44% of white county residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, around 42,000 people. But 38% of Asian people, 29% of Hispanic people, 23% of American Indian people and just 22% of Black people living in the county have received at least one dose.
The same phenomena is seen across Wisconsin and in most states across the country.
Across almost all health conditions, not just COVID-19, racial and ethnic disparities exist, said Lieske Giese, director of the Eau Claire City-County Health Department.
“Equity, broadly, is something that is an enormous concern,” Giese said Monday. “It’s not specific to COVID, but definitely we are seeing it with COVID-19, both in cases and deaths, and now with vaccinations as well.”
People haven’t gotten the COVID-19 vaccine for several reasons, Thao said.
“Some people just don’t want to get vaccinated … (some) folks don’t have access to the internet, access to good information about vaccines,” she said. “Language barriers also made it hard for folks to schedule vaccinations early when some people were being prioritized.”
Many local Hmong elders don’t have internet access, so didn’t know how to sign up for a vaccine appointment when they became eligible in January, Thao said.
“Speaking for elders again, a lot of people don’t have transportation and don’t drive,” she added. “No transportation makes it extremely difficult for people who want the vaccine.”
Mistrust of the health care system is also a common barrier for communities of color, Thao added.
The Health Department convenes a weekly group that recommends strategies to reach minority communities who are hesitant about the vaccine, Giese said. That group includes representatives from the Eau Claire Area Hmong Mutual Assistance Association, the Community Table and the Black and Brown Womyn Power Coalition.
“What they say right now is language, transportation and trust are the biggest issues,” Giese said.
To close the gap
What the Health Department is currently doing in Eau Claire County — holding mobile vaccination clinics, doing brief temporary vaccination sites at trusted places like churches — are strategies suggested by that local group, Thao said.
Thao said she believes language barriers may be the biggest hurdle to overcome.
“We need to make phone calls to households, have home health care that may offer the vaccine … I think for folks for whom language continues to be a barrier, you can’t expect to send a letter in the mail like you’d get from your doctors’ office,” Thao said. “We have to be able to have staffing and do the due diligence of calling people, maybe knocking on doors, to make sure they know that vaccinations are available and free, and that they know where to go get it.”
Another important strategy: Listening to people’s concerns to build trust, Giese said.
“We talked with Hmong elders a couple weeks ago about what the barriers were, how to work together, how to build trust between the Health Department, health care systems and Hmong elders,” Giese said.
Interpreters have also accompanied public health workers to local Hmong and Latinx restaurants to meet with community members there.
“Together, hopefully, we will open some doors,” Giese said. “That’s the goal right now.”
Thao said Eau Claire’s Hmong communities — hard-hit by the virus — are coping with the loss of the last year.
“The Hmong community continues to have funeral after funeral, people who passed either from COVID or other health issues. It’s just not been normal,” Thao said. “Families are really appreciating their loved ones and really holding closer together than before, but that’s also a good reason for us to get vaccinated. We want to be able to be around our families.”
Sarah Seifert is the L-T's education and health reporter. She has worked as a journalist in the Chippewa Valley since 2017 and joined the L-T in 2019. Get in touch at sarah.seifert@ecpc.com or on Twitter @sarahaseifert.
