HJBR May/Jun 2021

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE I  MAY / JUN 2021 41 other healthcare workers are important voices for Louisianans to hear. The LPHI survey found that for those hesitant to get the vaccine, doctors and healthcare provid- ers were the leading “trusted sources of in- formation,”with more than 70% saying they trusted doctors and health professionals “a lot” or “some.”That’s why we set up a hotline that will help people set up appointments for vaccines and connect callers with medi- cal professionals who can answer questions. That hotline number is 1-855-453-0774, and it runs 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Sat- urday and noon to 8 p.m. on Sundays. Of course, there is much more to do. It will be important for us to encourage peo- ple not to wait to get a vaccine so that we can get ahead of variants and continue to keep our hospitalizations low — as of April 8, at the lowest point since the start of the pandemic. We’re also asking people to share their vaccine experiences and become health ambassadors for their friends, fam- ily and neighbors. We’ll provide cards to the newly vaccinated as part of the campaign that will include important information they can provide to others and ways for them to share their vaccination on social media. We know that the best way out of a crisis in Louisiana is to do it together, and that’s what “Bring Back Louisiana” is all about. We can’t wait for Louisiana’s greatest tra- ditions to come back, and we know that all of those traditions involve being back to- gether again. At the Department of Health, we’re confident that will happen as these vaccines make it into more arms in a just, fair and equitable way. n Kimberly L. Hood is the assistant secretary for the Office of Public Health at the Louisiana Department of Health. She is an attorney-turned-public health professional who received a JD from Louisiana State University and an MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She first joined the Louisiana Department of Health in 2018 and was named assistant secretary in February 2021. collected by the Louisiana Public Health Institute, for example, 1 in 3 women of child-bearing age identified as unwilling to get the vaccine. This demographic tracks with what we’ve heard from focus groups and partners: that questions about the vaccines’ effect on fer- tility has created uncertainty. We’re fortu- nate that in addition to the COVID vaccine having no evidence of affecting fertility it- self, there is evidence of the vaccine con- ferring protection to the fetus, as well as through breast milk after birth. These are among the conversations we’ll need to have to “Bring Back Louisiana.”The campaign is centered on the premise that government, including the Department of Health and elected officials, are often not the most trusted to convey vaccine informa- tion. We recognize that, and we’ve designed the campaign to include trusted communi- ty voices who will knock on doors, answer questions about the vaccine and get behind vaccine events located in familiar and com- fortable settings. We also recognize that clinicians and is important to protect their family, they then must find a vaccine site, make an ap- pointment and get to a site to get the shot. It’s a lot. And in a state that has many rural communities with limited access to transportation, we just can’t expect that ev- eryone’s going to be getting a vaccine on a tight timeframe. It certainly helps that we’ve removed the eligibility barrier for who can get a vaccine, but it’s hardly surprising that there’s still more to do to get people to a provider or a vaccine site. Given how far we still need to go to im- prove our health outcomes, it shouldn’t be surprising that people put off getting the healthcare intervention they need. For many years, we’ve struggled as a state to get peo- ple access to health screenings and primary care providers. Missed appointments be- cause of family obligations, work or sim- ply not having a ride to a hospital or clin- ic is certainly nothing new for healthcare providers. Add to that the earned mistrust around healthcare in general, and the added chal- lenge of COVID vaccines being incredibly new, and it’s clear we have a lot of work to do. Just as the public needed to get up to speed during the early COVID response on the meaning of social distancing and the importance of wearing masks, it is under- standable that it will take the public some time to understand how something like messenger RNAworks — it had never even been used in a vaccine before the COVID crisis. And just as we’ve had to fight mis- information and confusion about COVID mitigation measures, we’ll need to do the same for vaccines. One of the things that gives us optimism about vaccine uptake is that in focus groups and in surveys, the questions people have do not indicate they are going to refuse a COVID vaccine outright. In survey data Kimberly L. Hood Assistant Secretary Office of Public Health Louisiana Department of Health