Our latest webinar, "Working with Faith-based & Community-based Organizations for Equitable COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign," is now available to stream on YouTube. Also, be sure to check out new Implementation Checklist, which is meant to help local residents and community groups work in partnership with their elected and appointed representatives to utilize the COVID-19 vaccination campaign to enable an equity-in-recovery movement.

Our local teams continue supporting vaccination efforts in their communities:

Communicating With Vaccine-Hesitant Parents: A Narrative Review. The communication that occurs between a provider and parent with regards to vaccination is critical in reducing concerns and nudging parents toward vaccine acceptance. We focus on promising approaches related to patient-provider communication within the context of vaccination. We found empirical evidence that the use of a presumptive format to recommend vaccines, motivational interviewing, and tailoring information to increase message salience are approaches that can positively affect vaccine acceptance. (Academic Pediatrics, 5/21)

Anti-vaccine movements shift their target to the vaccinated. While variations of such false claims have been part of misinformation campaigns around the COVID-19 vaccines, there has recently been a shift from demonizing the vaccine itself to villainizing those who are vaccinated. It's a peculiar repositioning for the anti-vaccination conspiracy movement — and as the false claim evolves into more extreme iterations, it has caught the attention of people who study and advocate against vaccine misinformation.. (Salon, 5/26/21)

See also: Antivaccine activists use a government database on side effects to scare the public (Science, 5/26/21)

Resistance to vaccine mandates is building. A powerful network is helping. At stake in this latest contest is whether hospitals, law enforcement agencies and others can require employees to take a vaccine that was made available in an expedited process permitted during a public health emergency — and, likewise, whether schools may require the shots for students, faculty and staff members in the same way many require familiar vaccines for measles and chickenpox. There is little case law on the matter, with only one vaccine, for anthrax exposure, previously cleared in a similar way. (Washington Post, 5/26/21)

‘It’s a minefield’: COVID vaccine safety poses unique communication challenge. Public-health specialists must always strike a careful balance when communicating about vaccine safety, but the enormous scale of the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out means that safety data are evolving fast — so researchers are scrambling to share developments transparently and clearly with the public. And they worry that with the rise of anti-vaccination movements, their messages might be used or interpreted to fuel misinformation campaigns. (Nature, 5/21/21)

Needle Fear Is an Underrecognized Vaccination Challenge. About one in four adults and two out of three children have some fear of needles, and adults may find their fears too shameful to share. This is a substantial public health problem, because a body of research shows that around one in 10 adults are so afraid of needles that they will delay or avoid vaccinations. (New York Times, 5/21/21)

The Vaccine Class Gap. Working-class members of every group are less likely to have received a vaccine and more likely to be skeptical. “No matter which of these groups we looked at, we see an education divide,” Mollyann Brodie, who oversees the Kaiser surveys, told me. In some cases, different racial groups with the same education levels — like Black and white college graduates — look remarkably similar. (New York Times, 5/24/21)

Faced with anti-vaccination parents, teens are helping one another get Covid shots. Kelly Danielpour, who runs VaxTeen, said that among the dozen or so queries she gets every day, many are from teenagers contending with parents opposed to them getting vaccinated against Covid-19. The first step, she said, is arming the teenagers with information and resources they can use when talking to their parents — and in some cases that has worked. But if that doesn’t sway parents’ opinions, she said, she tries to get the teenagers information about “minor self-consent.” (NBC, 5/23/21)

See also: Can teens get vaccinated if their parents object? (National Geographic, 5/25/21)

Getting Shots in Arms: Urgent Communications Planning and the COVID Vaccine. In this presentation, Kelly Insana with the Tennessee Hospital Association (THA) shares how her team built proactive statewide communications campaigns to promote vaccination. She'll also address the future of vaccine communication. The event will be held on June 2, 2021, 12 -1 PM EDT. (PRSA, 5/21)

Tackling Gender-Relation Barriers to Equitable COVID-19 Vaccine Deployment. This webinar will 1) Present the gender and vaccines guidance note and checklist for tackling gender-related barriers to equitable COVID-19 vaccine deployment; 2) Discuss recommendations and challenges to address gender-related barriers and inequities in the field of vaccine delivery and uptake in the Global South; and 3) Explore strategies implemented by selected countries related to equitable vaccine deployment. It will take place on June 3, 2021, 9-10 AM EDT. (United Nations University, 5/21)

Rand Paul says he won't get a Covid vaccination. Republicans remain perhaps the most a vaccination-resistant demographic. A recent PBS/NPR/Marist poll found that more than 4 in 10 Republicans say they have no plans to get vaccinated. Paul has said for months that his natural immunity means getting vaccinated is unnecessary, even though scientists say the evidence about long-lasting natural immunity is murky. (NBC, 5/23/21)

Half Of All U.S. Adults Are Now Fully Vaccinated Against COVID-19. The U.S. is pushing to add millions more people to the ranks of the vaccinated. President Biden said this month that his new goal is to administer at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to 70% of U.S. adults by the Fourth of July. (NPR, 5/25/21)

As the US Unmasks, the Pressure Is on for Vaccine Passports. The natural way to create a vaccine passport is to make it a federal function, as Israel and countries in Europe are doing, because national governments have the most comprehensive data about their citizens’ health status. Or, well, they ought to have. In fact, a decision made during the Trump administration renders it practically impossible for a federal vaccine passport to be created. (Wired, 5/25/21)

Ensuring Access to COVID-19 Vaccines for Older Adults and People with Disabilities Who Are Homebound: Recommendations and Considerations for Federal, State, and Local Agencies and their Partners. The infrastructure to ensure vaccine access to this population must be created in many jurisdictions. In other places, it must be leveraged from existing resources. In either case, these infrastructures will better safeguard the health of homebound people during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide needed response capacity during future public health emergencies. (Trust for America's Health, 5/21)

Las Vegas Officials Hold Pop-up Vaccine Clinic At Strip Club. The clinic opened for several hours Friday night, administering shots to about 100 people before the strip club opened for its usual business. Several workers at the club, including Hamner, a dancer at a topless revenue, got their shots at the clinic along with members of the public. (Bloomberg, 5/22/21)

Concerns about missing work may be a barrier to coronavirus vaccination. Nearly half of adults in the United States who have not received a coronavirus vaccine are concerned about missing work as a result of side effects from the shot, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released this month. The findings highlight a key obstacle to vaccination, particularly for the 25 percent of American workers who do not have any paid sick leave. (Washington Post, 5/27/21)

States Are One-Upping Each Other with Vaccine Rewards — But Will It Work? Offering people rewards for getting vaccinated isn’t something new. Large retail chains like CVS, Target, and Walgreens have offered perks like this for years — usually in the form of a gift card or coupon for customers who get a flu shot. Other businesses have gotten in on the giveaways during the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, offering everything from free doughnuts and beer to weed and amusement park tickets, with proof of vaccination. (Rolling Stone, 5/18/21)

They Haven’t Gone for a Shot. So Shots Are Coming to Them. Across the country, nurses, technicians, emergency medical workers and community partners are rolling up to the doorsteps, streets and churches of people who are homeless, who live in areas without reliable transportation or who have no internet access. Their goal: to reach the unvaccinated stragglers in overlooked neighborhoods, plugging a vulnerable gap in the nationwide effort to outmaneuver death. (New York Times, 5/20/21)

The Struggle to Improve Vaccination Rates Among Latinos in New York. In interviews, three dozen Latinos living in New York City expressed skepticism about how the vaccines were developed, but the primary reason they cited for not getting a shot was a lack of access. When the vaccine was first offered, some people didn’t know where to make an appointment or whom to ask for help. And those who did complained about the hurdles they faced: most of them worked more than one job and didn’t have time to search for a slot; others didn’t have a reliable Internet connection at home or were hesitant to call the vaccination hotline, owing to their limited command of English.. (New Yorker, 5/22/21)

See also: Latino, Black Californians ramp up vaccinations but lag far behind Asian, white residents (Los Angeles Times, 5/24/21)

US COVID-19 vaccination pace is down by nearly half in the last month. These states slow to vaccinate may struggle this summer, expert warns. The eight states with the fewest vaccine doses administered per capita are Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Wyoming, Idaho, Georgia and Tennessee, according to the CDC. The states with the most administered per capita are Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Rhode Island, New Mexico and New Jersey. Washington, DC has a rate of vaccination that would qualify in the top eight if it were a state, according to the CDC. (Philadelphia Tribune, 5/21/21)

Unmasked and Unequal. A Kaiser Health News analysis of CDC vaccination data this week found that only 22 percent of Black Americans have gotten vaccinated, and in most states the rate of Black people who’ve been vaccinated lags behind that of white residents. This is a flagrant failure in the vaccine rollout, especially considering that Black folks experienced some of the worst COVID-19 outcomes—a matter fueled by systemic racism and compounded by being more likely to work an essential job and less likely to have access to quality health care. (Slate, 5/21/21)

Indirect Protection by Reducing Transmission: Ending the Pandemic with SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination. The direct protection against disease measured by the clinical trials is important, but whether and to what extent the vaccines provide indirect protection by reducing transmission is also of great consequence in controlling and eventually ending the pandemic. Therefore, understanding the effects of vaccines on transmission is key to deploying evidence-based population vaccination plans, recommendations for the public, and policies for use of nonpharmaceutical interventions with varying degrees of effectiveness in this next stage of the pandemic. (Open Forum Infectious Diseases, 5/21)

See also: Can people vaccinated against COVID-19 still spread the coronavirus? (The Conversation, 5/25/21)

Vaccine waitlist Dr. B collected data from millions. But how many did it help? Almost 2.5 million people signed up to Dr. B with the promise of getting leftover vaccines. Months later, the site won’t disclose how many doses it helped deliver—or what it plans to do with user data. (MIT Technology Review, 5/24/21)

Should employers make vaccination mandatory? Yes, here’s why. Some Americans do not want to be vaccinated, with many bristling at the prospect of others telling them what to do. Individual liberty is a foundational American ideal. This underscores the critical importance of addressing directly whether workplace vaccine mandates are defensible. Our answer is: Yes, employers are ethically justified mandating that employees get vaccinated — especially when community transmission rates are high, and a sizable percentage of workers remain unvaccinated. (Baltimore Sun, 5/28/21)

See also: Employers Can (Mostly) Require Vaccines For Workers Returning To The Office (NPR, 5/28/21)

U.S. FDA may not review new COVID-19 vaccine EUA requests during pandemic. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday it may decline to review and process new emergency use authorization (EUA) requests for COVID-19 vaccines for the rest of the pandemic, if a company has not already begun discussions. (Reuters, 5/25/21)

Explaining HIPAA: No, it doesn’t ban questions about your vaccination status. Citing HIPAA as a reason to not disclose vaccination status is often a “knee-jerk reaction” that “quickly gets turned into a statement that sounds like law,” said Robert Gatter, a professor with the Center for Health Law Studies at St. Louis University School of Law. People sometimes say, “‘But I have a right not to be asked that question,’” he continued, “and it’s just not the case.” (Washington Post, 5/22/21)

C.D.C. Will Not Investigate Mild Infections in Vaccinated Americans. Critics say the agency is missing important opportunities to learn about the real-world effectiveness of the different vaccines and to gather information that might help identify trends in the pandemic’s trajectory — for example, how long vaccine protection lasts, or how various vaccines compare in preventing infection with variants, or whether certain patients like older people are more susceptible to breakthrough infections. (New York Times, 5/25/21)

The US worried about vaccine tourists. Now it’s encouraging them. Robert Amler, the dean of New York Medical College’s school of health science and practice, says that encouraging travelers to fly to the United States from places with low vaccination rates—and potentially higher levels of infection—may itself be bad for public health. “Any risk of ‘importing’ covid infections will depend on the volume of incoming travelers and the percent of travelers arriving who already have covid infection,” says Amler, a former chief medical officer at the CDC. (MIT Technology Review, 5/26/21)

White House teams up with Snapchat to encourage Covid vaccinations for young Americans. Starting Wednesday, Snapchat users will be able to use an augmented reality lens that features President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Dr. Anthony Fauci and viral immunologist Kizzmekia Corbett answering questions about the vaccine. (CNN, 5/26/21)

SARS-CoV-2 vaccines for all but a single dose for COVID-19 survivors. We believe the best solution is to provide individuals who already had a SARS-CoV-2 infection receive only one (rather than two) shots of the currently authorized mRNA vaccines (BNT162b2/Pfizer; mRNA-1273/Moderna). Emerging real world evidence suggest that the antibody responses to the first vaccine dose in individuals with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection is equal to or exceeds the antibody titers found in naïve individuals after the second dose. (The Lancet, 5/25/21)

Moderna says its Covid-19 shot works in kids as young as 12. The company studied more than 3,700 12- to 17-year-olds. Preliminary findings showed the vaccine triggered the same signs of immune protection in kids as it does in adults, and the same kind of temporary side effects such as sore arms, headache and fatigue. There were no COVID-19 diagnoses in those given two doses of the Moderna vaccine compared with four cases among kids given dummy shots. In a press release, the company also said the vaccine appeared 93% effective two weeks after the first dose. (STAT, 5/25/21)

COVID-19 Vaccine Makers Are Looking Beyond the Spike Protein. In recent months, though, it’s become clear that the coronavirus is a slippery, shape-shifting foe—and spike appears to be one of its most malleable traits. Eventually, our first generation of spike-centric vaccines will likely become obsolete. To get ahead of that inevitability, several companies are already looking to develop new vaccine formulations packed with additional bits of the coronavirus, ushering in an end to our monogamous affair with spike. (The Atlantic, 5/21/21)

How greenlighting Pfizer's new vaccine storage requirements could dramatically improve access. "The ability to store Pfizer vaccine in refrigerators for a period of time is great news as this makes the vaccine more readily available to the public because community clinicians like me are able to get, store and deliver vaccinations to help us reach the last mile, have more flexibility in distribution plans and reach areas where vaccines may be harder to access in a timely manner," said Dr. Jay Bhatt, an internist in Chicago and an ABC News medical contributor. (ABC, 5/22/21)

Pfizer Reaps Hundreds of Millions in Profits From Covid Vaccine. The vaccine brought in $3.5 billion in revenue in the first three months of this year, nearly a quarter of its total revenue, Pfizer reported. The vaccine was, far and away, Pfizer’s biggest source of revenue. (New York Times, 5/4/21)

I’m subject NL002-0060 and I’m dropping out of my COVID-19 vaccine trial. I’m looking forward to being safe from COVID-19. I want my 2019 life back—or something that resembles it. Summer is coming, and even with my two scheduled appointments, it will take until early July to be fully protected. “I’d like to drop out of the trial,” I said. The physician said she understood; it was what she would recommend. (Science, 5/24/21)

Can ‘Vaccinated’ Breast Milk Protect Kids? The Science Is Hazy. Despite the limited data, across the country, interest in what some are calling “vaccinated milk,” bought on the black market, has risen in recent months. Some are reportedly advertising it on Craigslist for $3.50 an ounce — more than 10 times the price of gasoline. (This, to be clear, isn’t a great idea: Research has shown that untested milk can have all kinds of bacteria and one small 2015 study found that about 10 percent of samples advertised as human breast milk online contained milk from a cow.). (Undark, 5/19/21)