Lessons from an immigrant-focused community COVID-19 vaccination organization

Abstract

Three snapshots from Minneapolis, Minnesota’s Seward neighborhood:

April 2021: The week before Ramadan, the Somali mosque is crowded with dozens of people who’ve come for their COVID-19 vaccine. Over three chaotic days, 239 people will be vaccinated; 16 are older than age 65 and have already been eligible for nearly three months.

August 2021: This time the mosque is vaccinating older children in a community where children’s vaccinations have been intensely controversial. The event vaccinates 27 children and teenagers and 17 adults over two crowded hours; all but two return in three weeks for their second Pfizer dose. Across town, events organized for similar communities by larger hospital systems struggle to find takers.

January 2022: This time the clinic is at the neighborhood’s other mosque, which serves congregants of the Oromo ethnicity. At a time when it is easy to assume that those remaining unvaccinated are unreachable, 65 people come for shots, 20 of them primary-series vaccinations.

These snapshots—reflecting some of nine successful vaccination events held between April 2021 and February 2022—are the product of a distinctive community vaccination model organized by the Seward Vaccine Equity Project, a small, all-volunteer organization formed in the aftermath of the George Floyd uprising.