UA heads project to increase vaccinations in Black Belt region

The University of Alabama (UA) is heading a project to get 70% of people in the Black Belt region vaccinated in the next year. 

According to a press release from UA, the university has been given a grant of $1 million from the Health Resources and Services Administration to support pop-up vaccination clinics in the region, as well as outreach programs and vaccine information. 

UA is working with the Rural Alabama Prevention Center on the project and will use a team of specialists in the areas of medicine, psychology, nursing, communicative disorders and social work. 

The university cites a finding from the CDC that Alabama ranks among the highest in COVID cases and lowest in vaccination as a factor for spearheading the effort. 

“This is a very important and timely grant award in Alabama,” said Dr. Hee Yun Lee, from the UA School of Social Work and Endowed Academic Chair in Social Work.

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“Alabama’s low vaccination rate is more serious in rural areas than urban areas, so our grant targets rural communities like the Black Belt areas to increase the vaccination rate.”

Members of UA's team in the project are: Dr. Pamela Payne-Foster, professor of community medicine and population health in the College of Community Health Sciences and a preventative medicine/public health physician; Dr. Rebecca Allen, professor and interim chair of the UA Department of Psychology; Dr. JoAnn Oliver, professor of nursing; and Dr. Marcia Hay-McCutcheon, professor of communicative disorders.

The UA will use its Hear Here mobile truck to help communities get access to clinics and pharmacies for vaccines in remote areas. Participants of the project also hope to "improve" literacy on the vaccine through social media. 

“It will be very hard to convince those who have not been vaccinated yet in Alabama,” Lee said. “We will develop and conduct a tailored health literacy education campaign first to reduce the misinformation, vaccine hesitancy and mistrust toward the COVID-19 vaccine by working with community partners."

"I believe that enhancing the vaccine literacy should come first and then we will go to the community to provide the vaccine.”