KANSAS CITY, Mo. — From a vaccine van administering COVID-19 vaccines door-to-door to a regional vaccine availability alert system, an organization called Comeback KC is working to make it easier for people in the Kansas City area to get vaccinated.
The group is made up of public and private entities in the area known collectively as C19KC. Throughout the pandemic, Comeback KC has helped raise awareness about testing and launched a risk evaluator for the region.
Now, its attention has turned to helping vaccinate the population.
It created a regional sign-up sheet to notify registrants of vaccine availability at health departments, pharmacies, hospitals and more. You can sign up for the alerts by filling out the survey on Comeback KC’s website.
Organizers hope the approach levels the playing field.
“We hear anecdotally a lot of people who are getting vaccinations have an army of nieces and nephews who are scouring the web looking for info and appointments and jumping on it like it’s a hot ticket at Ticketmaster,” explained Mark Logan with Comeback KC.
The organization hopes to roll out a vaccine van in March. The van is a collaboration with KC Digital Drive, Black and Veatch and Dimensional Innovations.
The van will have a freezer to keep the vaccine at the correct temperature and a sanitation system to keep the workspace healthy.
Organizers look forward to the day when they can drive door-to-door delivering the vaccine to the homebound. They are still fine-tuning how to make the process work.
“You want to be careful and deliberate about how you do things,” explained Aaron Deacon from KC Digital Drive. “But you also don’t want to be paralyzed by the things you don’t know.”
The vaccine van will help ensure equitable distribution of the vaccine.
Data from Kansas City, Missouri, and Wyandotte County, Kansas, shows the rate of death from COVID-19 is highest among the LatinX community.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said Friday the city needs to do a better job getting the LatinX community vaccinated.
“We seem to be replicating the health inequities we see throughout our healthcare system and that’s not only unfortunate, it’s tragic and reprehensible,” Logan, from Comeback KC, added.
The city is working on outreach programs in different languages to help create the equitable distribution.
