Maya McFadden Photo
Lino Monge gets his vaccination shot at the Casa Otonal senior apartment complex.
Long wait times to book vaccination appointments by phone. Transportation difficulties. Lack of information about how to sign up.
Dwight neighbors raised these observations as they considered why nonwhite seniors in particular seem few and far between at Covid-19 vaccination sites in New Haven.
The discussed occurred Tuesday night at the regular monthly meeting of the Dwight Community Management Team, held online.
Neighbors discussed a trend emerging nationwide: Those vaccinated so far to protect against the novel coronavirus are disproportionately white.
Zoom
Neighbor Sheila Shanklin: I got my shot. I was one of the few nonwhite patients there.
Sheila Shanklin broached the topic when she spoke about her own experience getting vaccinated at the mass vaccination site at the field house at Hillhouse High School.
“It was easy to get it done. Hillhouse was the best place for me — all my children graduated from there,” Shanklin shared. “I was surprised that I didn’t see more people of color there.”
She asked whether there were flyers they could share with neighbors.
“Some people, especially the elderly, don’t know how to call or text to get the appointment,” Shanklin said.
Yale New Haven Health’s Andrew Orefice: Our call center is hiring.
Yale New Haven Health representative Andrew Orefice agreed with Shanklin that the only nonwhite shot recipients he saw on his visit to a vaccination site were coworkers from the hospital system. To fix accessibility issues, YNHH is planning to place an employee at Hillhouse High School’s Floyd Little Fieldhouse to set up vaccination appointments.
“The feedback is the online system is really hard for octogenarians,” Orefice said.
CMT Chair Florita Gillespie said that the alternative — making an appointment by phone — has not worked for her neighbors.
“A lot of seniors were calling me and telling me that they could not get through on the phone. If you were able to set up places where they can come in to make an appointment, that would be good. They’re ready to go, they just can’t get through,” Gillespie said.
Orefice responded that Yale New Haven Health has been trying to hire more people to staff its phone lines. The position requires some expertise in taking medical calls and handling medical databases — skills it is hard to train employees for quickly.
“We cannot hire fast enough. We have been trying to staff up the call centers for months,” Orefice said.
Neighbor Kate Walton said her experience as CEO of Interfaith Volunteer Care Givers of Greater New Haven revealed another barrier: transportation. She suggested the vaccinators meet seniors where they live, as Walgreens has done for The Towers senior assisting-living home.
Orefice said that New Haven’s vaccine partners do travel to multifamily housing sites. The problem is finding the elderly who live scattered in individual homes. He noted that seniors can get to their vaccination appointments with Veyo, the same ride service Connecticut Medicaid members can use to get to doctor’s appointments.
Orefice said the hospital system was planning to announce further vaccine accessibility changes in the new few days.
Can the religious institutions like churches and mosques help seniors to sign up for the appointments online or on the phone? Or can the vaccine clinics and virus testing centers staff a table with an appointment making assistant to help people in the neighborhoods sign up for their appointments?
My husband and I had to assist our elderly parents to sign them up for vaccine appointments and while the first attempt on the VAMS website was ridiculously difficult, and the phone call wait times were insane, the second attempt through YNHH appointments and a phone call to verify the appointment info for the VAMS attempt were much easier to navigate once we knew where to go for the info. NHI articles helped us to figure out who to contact.