Check out our latest report, Carrying Equity in COVID-19 Vaccination Forward: Guidance Informed by Communities of Color, for insights on COVID-19 vaccination rollout challenges in communities across the countries.

Recently, WAVY reported that the Shots at the Shop model - spearheaded by our team in Prince George's County, MD - is soon coming to Perfect Styles Beauty and Barber Salon in Newport News, Virginia. Read more about the effort here.

Unity Across the Americas | COVID-19 Vaccine Education. Pope Francis and six Cardinals and Archbishops from the US and Latin America have come together for a message of unity in support of COVID-19 vaccines and access for all. Their message is that COVID-19 vaccines bring hope to protect us against this deadly disease and help end the pandemic – along with the idea that getting vaccinated can be a simple yet profound way to care for one another, especially the most vulnerable. (Ad Council, 8/17/21)

Trusted Messengers and Trusted Spaces: Engaging Arts and Culture for Vaccine Confidence in Your Community. In this 1-hour webinar, panelists collaborating on vaccine confidence and demand from the public health and arts and cultural sectors, will share practice examples, strategies, and resources for building partnerships and programs that engage artists and culture-bearers. They will focus on how to create synergistic, equitable, culturally responsive, and sustainable partnerships and programs that engage artists as critical partners and trusted messengers in promoting vaccine confidence—for COVID-19 and beyond. The webinar will be held on August 24, 2021, 2 PM ET. Registration is required. (CDC, 8/21)

In Communities We Trust: Institutional Failures and Sustained Solutions for Vaccine Hesitancy. In this report, we examine analogical case studies that help us understand the roots of institutional distrust and ultimately, vaccine hesitancy. Our analysis identifies sources of public mistrust and anticipates better approaches for establishing community trust, especially for those from marginalized or disadvantaged backgrounds. (University of Michigan, 5/21)

Parents Support School Mask Mandates But Oppose Student Vaccine Requirements. This includes most (58%) parents of adolescent students, ages 12-17, who are already eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccine under an emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Fewer (42%) of these parents say they want their schools to mandate vaccination. (Kaiser Family Foundation, 8/11/21)

Top California law enforcement agencies report vaccination rates far lower than public. The majority of police and sheriffs’ departments declined to share statistics, but the ones that replied appeared to have vaccination rates that were markedly lower than their surrounding communities, raising significant public health concerns as the Delta variant of the coronavirus surges and lawmakers debate vaccine mandates for government employees. (The Guardian, 8/16/21)

How to talk to vaccine-hesitant people. Here’s what what experts say generally works best when trying to persuade someone you care about to get the vaccine. (MIT Technology Review, 8/16/21)

See also: As The Coronavirus Surges In Florida, Some Vaccine Skeptics Change Their Minds (NPR, 8/17/21)

These People Got Vaccinated Against COVID-19 After Holding Out For Months. They Told Us Why. Most people who responded to our callout were not virulent anti-vaxxers. Some faced barriers that were systemic, like not being offered time off from work to recover from their shot. Others had concerns rooted in the country’s history of racism in the medical system. A number of pregnant people had been worried about whether the vaccine would affect their babies. (BuzzFeed News, 8/17/21)

Don’t let vaccine hesitancy become vaccine regret. The epidemic of misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines has contributed to the tragic loss of life for an untold number of our fellow citizens. This “misinfodemic” spread just as rapidly as the virus. Rumors and incorrect information have convinced far too many to remain unvaccinated. Today, Alabama is the least vaccinated state in the nation. The consequences have been devastating. (Alabama Political Reporter, 8/16/21)

The NFL discovers how to trounce vaccine hesitancy. The short answer is that the league put its foot down, hard, on any resistance to getting vaccinated against COVID-19. The league made its views known in a July 22 memo delineating the consequences to any of the 32 teams that experienced a viral outbreak traceable to unvaccinated staff or players. (Los Angeles Times, 8/17/21)

The Vaccine Scientist Spreading Vaccine Misinformation. No matter how nuanced Robert Malone might try to be, or how many qualifiers he appends to his opinions, he is egging on vaccine hesitancy at a time when hospitals in the least-vaccinated parts of the country are struggling to cope with an influx of new COVID-19 patients. (The Atlantic, 8/12/21)

Vaccines Are Like Sunscreen … No, Wait, Airbags … No, Wait … A lot of the ideas we link to COVID-19 vaccines—including plenty I’ve used—don’t totally hit the mark. Too many focus on vaccines’ individual perks. And they end up skating over one of the greatest benefits of immunization: a boost in wellness at the community level, by cutting down on transmission and, by extension, illness for everyone else. (The Atlantic, 8/13/21)

Biden administration to start booster shots on Sept. 20. The Biden administration is recommending booster doses for most Americans who received a coronavirus vaccine in order to combat waning immunity and the prevalence of the delta variant. In a joint statement Wednesday, top administration health officials said people would need boosters beginning eight months after their second dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine. (The Hill, 8/18/21)

To vaccinate more Americans, lean into outbreaks. Mass vaccination campaigns peaked in April and the number of doses administered daily have slowed considerably in all 50 states. To get more Americans vaccinated, it’s time to harness the concern generated by outbreaks and focus vaccination resources on people being exposed to the virus. It’s time to really integrate vaccination efforts into systems for testing and contact tracing. (STAT, 8/19/21)

How Dorothy Oliver got 94% of her Alabama town vaccinated. Alabama has the lowest Covid-19 vaccination rate in the country, but thanks to a retired office administrator in one small town, the vaccination rate is 94%. Dorothy Oliver organized a pop-up vaccination clinic in Panola, Ala., and then went door-to-door to answer questions and get people signed up. (MSNBC, 8/17/21)

COVID-19 Vaccine Equity- The Neglected Pandemic Stepchild. Unless we make equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines the top priority in addressing the current crisis and focus a maximum of resources to make it happen, this pandemic will follow a similar progression to HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis, signaling another moral failure to place equal value on human life everywhere regardless of geography. (PLOS, 8/18/21)

Why A Hard-Sell Pitch For COVID Vaccines Won't Work In This Rural Illinois Town. The Cooperative Extension System has a long tradition of bringing research-based information to communities on a wide variety of topics, including water quality, food safety and disaster preparedness. With its roots sunk deep in rural America, where vaccines have been slow to catch on, the system is now using state and federal funding to pay for immunization education efforts tailored to specific communities. (NPR, 8/15/21)

COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence Bootcamp on the Rapid Community Assessment. This bootcamp will provide guidance on how to conduct a rapid community assessment to identify perceptions of and barriers to COVID-19 vaccine confidence and demand in communities of focus and how to address those barriers with recommended strategies. It will be held on August 23, 2021, 2 PM ET. Registration is required. (CDC, 8/21)

Workers Have Strong Views on Vaccine Mandates; More in Favor. U.S. workers hold strong opinions on employer vaccination requirements, with two-thirds saying they either strongly favor (36%) or strongly oppose (29%) these. Overall, employees are more likely to favor such mandates, with 52% saying they are in favor, 38% opposed and 10% neutral. (Gallup, 8/18/21)

Biden to require nursing homes get staff vaccinated or lose federal funds. President Joe Biden will announce Wednesday afternoon that he is directing the Department of Health and Human Services to draw up new regulations making employee vaccination a condition for nursing homes to participate in Medicare and Medicaid, the officials said. The move represents a significant escalation in Biden's campaign to get Americans vaccinated and the tools he is willing to use, marking the first time he has threatened to withhold federal funds in order to get people vaccinated. (CNN, 8/18/21)

See also: Vaccine hesitancy in nursing homes isn’t all politics (Brookings Institution, 8/19/21)

A Pharmacist Is Charged With Selling COVID-19 Vaccine Cards For $10 On eBay. A black market for blank vaccine cards has cropped up online in recent months, but federal officials say it is illegal to use one if you are unvaccinated. People who receive the COVID-19 vaccine, which is free, are issued a vaccine card. (NPR, 8/18/21)

Federal Employees and COVID-19 Vaccination Attestations: Immediate Takeaways. This report provides background on the federal vaccination attestation policy. It then describes the primary authorities federal agencies may employ to implement the policy and relevant constitutional considerations. Next, the report discusses key requirements under federal antidiscrimination laws that may inform the implementation of the guidance. Finally, the report briefly considers whether COVID-19 vaccines’ current emergency use authorization (EUA) status affects the federal government’s ability to impose requirements related to vaccination. (Congressional Research Service, 8/13/21)

Antibodies reveal who’s protected by Moderna’s COVID vaccine. The study, posted as a preprint on 11 August, examined neutralizing antibodies, which can block viral infection of cells. The authors’ modelling found that people with undetectable levels of neutralizing antibodies were 10 times more likely to develop COVID-19 than individuals whose antibody levels placed them in the 90th percentile of all study participants. (Nature, 8/18/21)

Additional mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines for Moderately to Severely Immunocompromised People. During this COCA Call, presenters discussed the current data on COVID-19 vaccines in immunocompromised people; the role of additional doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, patients who should be considered to receive these additional COVID-19 vaccine doses, results from the August 13, 2021, Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting, and CDC’s guidance on additional COVID-19 doses in immunocompromised people. (CDC, 8/17/21)