The CommuniVax team in Tuscaloosa, Alabama has recently connected with the Partners in Health – US project team in Montgomery, Alabama. Together, they are exploring opportunities to strengthen local community health systems through multisector collaboration and training community health workers. They are excited to continue to working together – often in person! – to reach these aims and support each other’s complementary work.

Video: Barbershop Zine Premiere. The team in Prince George's County, MD has officially launched two new zines from their Barbershop Storybook Project, illustrated by artists Marcus Ford and Jasmine Mitchell. The premiere is now available to stream on YouTube, where you can learn how the zines were developed and listen to a narration by the artists. (University of Maryland, 6/1/22)

The CommuniVax team in San Diego, California has been busy conducting key informant interviews. They are speaking with investigators across academic institutions, leaders of community-based organizations, and community health workers/promotoras themselves about how to form and maintain sustainable academic-community partnerships. They are also supporting a strategic planning process for a promotora coalition in South San Diego. They look forward to documenting their experiences to share with other localities.

The Anti-Vaccine Movement’s New Frontier.  instead of feeling confident about vaccines, a growing segment of the population may be primed to feel more anxious and doubtful about them, and that doubt may be seeping into their relationship with medical science — or governmental mandates — in general. (New York Times, 5/25/22)

An emergency doctor and parent sorts through Covid vaccine options for kids under 5. How should parents look at these two potential options in vaccinating young kids against Covid? The hosts of “The Readout LOUD” spoke with Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, instructor at Harvard Medical School, and a dad of a kid under 5 who’s sorting through all of this himself. (STAT, 5/27/22)

Novavax's COVID vaccine nears the finish line. The Novavax vaccine employs an approach that has been used for many other vaccines. It involves injecting a protein from the virus that is produced for the vaccine by insect cells. The protein then is combined with a substance known as an adjuvant to further stimulate the immune system. (NPR, 6/3/22)

Special Olympics Drops Covid-19 Vaccine Requirement After Florida Threatens $27.5 Million Fine. The Special Olympics 2022 USA Games, which will include those particularly vulnerable to Covid-19, will be held in Orlando, Florida, in a state that’s currently experiencing an upswing in Covid-19 cases and has ranked among the worst states in the U.S. in terms of Covid-19 cases and deaths. And the Special Olympics tried to enforce Covid-19 vaccination requirements to protect participants but the Florida Department of Health, with an emphasis on the word “Health,” won’t allow them to do so. (Forbes, 6/4/22)

Supporting immunization programs to address COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: Recommendations for national and community-based stakeholders. To bring the COVID-19 pandemic to a swift end, immunization programs need national and community-based stakeholders to unify with them in efforts to address vaccine hesitancy. These stakeholders include those with decision making authority, community influence and/or resources, such as state and local policy makers, government agencies, business leaders, faith institutions, academia, and community, business, and philanthropic organizations. (Vaccine, 5/22)

Opportunities For Equity In Research Grantmaking. At its core, research identifies an important question and derives an approach to answer it. But historically, the ability to conduct research has been limited to those with power, privilege, and resources. While grantmaking provides significant resources to fund research, those resources have been concentrated among largely White-led, affluent research settings. (Health Affairs, 5/23/22)

Population Health Funding and Accountability to Community: A Workshop. Join us as we explore the evolution in approaches to financing population health improvement efforts, including activities that target social, economic, and environmental factors that shape health and health equity. This event will include presentations and discussions about accountability frameworks that link investments to community needs and endeavor to track and improve health outcomes. The workshop will take place on June 22, 2022, 11 AM-4:30 PM ET. (National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, 6/22)

Online Training Hub for Community Health Workers. ​The Northern ACEs Collaborative, a project of PHI’s Population Health Innovation Lab, has created a training hub which offers CHW training through online, self-paced courses in three learning branches: core skills, healthy living, and chronic illness. (Public Health Institute, 6/2/22)

1 in 8 LGBTQ+ Americans Discriminated Against by Health Insurer. HealthCare.com surveyed 520 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ+) Americans to assess their health insurance coverage, personal finances, and experiences with a range of insurance carriers, including government and private programs. (Healthcare.com, 5/16/22)

Innovations In: Health Equity. Scientific American has recently published a collection of articles investigating how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated health inequity in the United States. (Scientific American, 5/17/22)

NACCHO360. Registration is now open for the 2022 NACCHO360 Conference, to be held virtually and in-person July 19–21, 2022, in Atlanta at the Hyatt Regency. This year’s theme, Looking to the Future: Reshaping the Public Health System, will explore how the local public health workforce and its stakeholders can move forward in the midst of an ongoing crisis while implementing traditional and innovative approaches to restructure a system built to protect the health of communities nationwide. (NACCHO, 6/22)

Release Event: National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being. After almost six years of community building among a network of 200+ organizations, the Clinician Well-Being Collaborative is releasing a National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being to drive collective action to improve health workforce well-being and ultimately restore the health of the nation. Together, leaders in health care and public health, government, payers, health IT, education, professional societies, and importantly, health workers, can use the National Plan to cultivate a health system to better support our care providers and patient care. The event, which will take place both in person and virtually, is scheduled for June 24, 2022, 11AM-12PM EDT. (National Academy of Medicine, 6/22)

Public Health Workers Still Fighting the Pandemic, Even as Policy Makers Move On. In an interview with Route Fifty, Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association, reflected on the shifting nature of the pandemic, the lessons learned and his concerns about the future. (Route Fifty, 5/18/22)

Expanding Access to Equitable Behavioral Health Services. Our behavioral health needs have never been greater, and the time is now for expanding equitable access to services. The problem is complex, but bipartisan commitments in Congress, leadership from the Biden administration, and the prioritization of the issue at the state level can pave the way for change. (Commonwealth Fund, 5/12/22)

Community health worker programs support local care. Providence CHWs have been in the field supporting community members for years, but in 2021 we launched an expansion, with new programs in 12 service areas across the seven states we serve. Early in the year, these programs responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by distributing personal protective equipment, managing contact tracing, and administering tests and vaccines. (Providence.org, 5/17/22)

See also: How Community Health Centers Are Serving Low-Income Communities During the COVID-19 Pandemic Amid New and Continuing Challenges (Kaiser Family Foundation, 6/3/22)

Integrating Mixed Methods Social Network Analysis to Assess Community–Academic Partnerships. Community–academic partnerships (CAPs) in public health are increasingly utilized to integrate community voice into decision-making processes of health-related interventions, programs, and practice. However, community partners’ collaboration experiences remain understated in the literature. Thus, there is a need to further advance methodological approaches that examine the effectiveness of CAPs, while also highlighting community voice to, ultimately, improve public health outcomes. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 6/22)

See also: Teaching Health Equity: A Medical School and a Community-Based Research Center Partnership (Johns Hopkins University Press, 6/22)

Review of Federal Policies that Contribute to Racial and Ethnic Health Inequities: Meeting #1. During this meeting, NASEM Committee members reviewed current Federal policies that contribute to health inequities, including those policies that impact the social determinants of health; provided analysis and potential solutions that are both evidence-based and non-partisan; and identified the most effective or promising strategies to eliminate or modify to advance racial and ethnic health equity. (National Academies, 5/25/22)