Covid-19 continues to have disproportionately impacted traditionally high risk and underserved communities in Kansas City, Missouri. While the total case numbers have fallen and the numbers of deaths at the time of this application (556 deaths) seems to plateaued, the current goal of the department is to continue vaccination and infrastructure support and reinforce community health within these communities.From the departments own vaccination data, we are aware that additional efforts are needed in the Latinx community. The Kansas City ACS 2019 1 year estimates that 11.2% are Hispanic, but our current vaccinations are 5% of our total vaccinations. The same estimate reports that our Black population is 26.1%. Our vaccination efforts as of the time of the time of this application is 33%.One challenge is the lack of reliable state data on race and ethnicity and vaccinations. In Missouri, race and ethnicity is considered an optional data field in the state?s vaccine database. Many providers are not reporting race and ethnicity. An analysis done by statistical team on March 18 discovered that the following: 27% of records have no known Ethnicity (29,585 records), 16% of records have no known race (17,402 records), and 10% of records are denoted ?multi-racial? (11,366 records). One goal of the proposed grant is working with the community to educate and help advocate for systems that are culturally and community appropriate. Educating the community and providers will provide opportunities to improve services, resources and vaccination. The department and community will work together to expand existing and/or develop new mitigation and prevention resources and services to reduce COVID-19 related disparities. This will be accomplished through mini grants to community based organizations, schools, businesses and associations. Support through marketing, grassroots educational campaigns and focus groups will help the department track shifts in v
accine hesitancies and infrastructure challenges to further refine approaches to get more underserved vaccinated.As the pandemic spread in Kansas City, many of our outbreaks were located in meat-packing facilities, group homes and front-line workers that typically had low wages. While many of those residents lived in low life expectancy zip codes, low SES workers can be found in multiple areas within Kansas City. As vaccinations continue, efforts will need to be maintained in zip codes that correlate to the Level IV Social Vulnerability Index. Hiring and using Capacity Trainer and Navigators and the direct one-on-one with individuals, businesses and associations to build, leverage, we can expand infrastructure support for COVID-19 prevention and control. The targeted community/zip codes 64106 ,64123, 64124, 64125, 64126, 64127, 64128, 64130To mobilize the community, one activity will be to build cross-sector coalitions of community stakeholders/business associations to review the COVID-19 response and recovery efforts to recommend improvement so that communities, residents and economies are better able to respond to public health challenges (working through the Health Advisory Council and KCMO Health Commission). Further support of mobilizing partners through 4-5 infrastructure grants with associations and businesses that serve Low SES individuals will not only increase vaccination rates, but build the relationships and capacities to address and improve the social determinates of health within these targeted zip codes.
