With COVID Vaccines Approved for Grade Schoolers, Public Health Officials Target Equity

Recent coverage of the aging Lloyd Center describes the mall as near-empty and facing foreclosure. But in the next few months, the old Sears will serve as a welcoming hub for families who want to get their young children vaccinated.

Last week, the Federal Drug Administration issued emergency use approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in children aged five to 11. The modified vaccine has shown nearly identical success rates to the version teens and adults have received, with a reported 90% success rate in preventing symptomatic infections in children. The two-shot vaccine is spaced three weeks apart and is a third of the dosage given to adults.

With that approval, all grade school children are eligible to receive the vaccine. While 180,000 doses of the pediatric vaccine were made available to Oregon in the last week, fears persist that the vaccine will not reach enough Black children. The rate of vaccination among Black adults has lagged behind that of their White counterparts, and public health officials are concerned vaccine rates among Black grade schoolers will follow that trend.

charlene mcgee intro Charlene McGee, REACH program director“We recognize that for a child to be administered the vaccine, oftentimes is also tied into the adult, the guardian’s decision-making,” Charlene McGee, Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) program director, told The Skanner. “Inasmuch as we’re working to get children vaccinated, we recognize that as much as our approach is collaborative, this also remains a collaborative approach with families we’re working with.”

An Inclusive Rollout

Pediatric COVID vaccines are currently available through healthcare providers and pharmacies. Over the weekend, Sellwood Medical Clinic administered 1,200 doses at Oaks Park, and Portland Public Schools plans to hold vaccine clinics in the afternoon and evenings at eight of its Title 1 elementary schools: Boise-Eliot/Humboldt Elementary, César Chávez K-8, Faubion PK-8, Lent Elementary, Rigler Elementary, Rosa Parks Elementary, Scott Elementary, and Sitton Elementary. Clinic dates have not yet been announced.

With accessibility in mind, REACH partnered with Children’s Community Clinic, Legacy Health Systems, Medical Team International, and Kaiser Permanente to launch a vaccine clinic open Tuesdays from 2 to 8 p,m, and Thursdays 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“It’s important to recognize that in addition to race and gender, we know that individuals within our community have intersectional identities that may include disability,” McGee said. “We want to make sure they feel like the space is welcoming. We do our best to make the space accessible.”

Organizers also want to make the space as useful as possible, with a pop-up library and Urban League staff present to advise attendees on housing, employment and educational resources available to them.

City and county health officials have long maintained that the best approach to countering misinformation about the vaccine in marginalized communities is more personal and one-on-one.

“The work is focused on vaccine acceptance,” McGee said.

“We recognize when we step into the space in our community where we acknowledge the medical mistrust, medical racism, the injustice and disparity that unfortunately are embedded in our systems -- people sense and gravitate toward the truth, it’s like the elephant in the room. With that we build and pave this pathway for people to ask whatever question they want to ask, in a nonjudgmental setting.

When people can have their questions answered honestly, we’ve seen that people are able to get vaccinated.”

Rising Rates in Children

Nationally, there have been 1.9 million COVID cases among children in the 5- to 11-year-old age group, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Of children in this age group who were hospitalized with COVID, 37% were Black; 72% were of the BIPOC community. Among this age group, 146 deaths from COVID have been reported.

Vaccinating children is key, public health officials agree: In-person schooling presents daily opportunities for infections to spread and for students to then carry the virus home. This can be particularly devastating for those who live in multigenerational households, where elderly relatives and those who are immunocompromised are most at risk. Meanwhile, Centers for Disease Control data shows that children in the 5- to 11-year-old demographic are comprising a growing percentage of COVID cases, while age groups that have had access to the vaccine are trending down.

For all age groups, the CDC recommends that even those who have had COVID still get vaccinated, as antibodies produced from infection are weaker, less effective, and less long-lasting than vaccine-induced antibody response.

In Multnomah County, 70% of those eligible to receive the vaccine are fully vaccinated.

“I’m seeing more people coming around to mandates

carl anderson md intro Carl Anderson, M.D."And so I think that being able to have a job versus not have a job is convincing a lot of people to get the vaccine,” Carl Anderson, a local physician who has been active in countering misinformation about COVID-19, told The Skanner.

Mandates may be reaching students, too: The Portland Public School board is scheduled to vote Nov. 16 on whether to issue a mandate requiring public school students to be vaccinated in order to attend in-person instruction. The potential mandate would either impact students 12 and above or 16 and above.

Meanwhile, public health officials continue their efforts to educate and answer questions from concerned parents and children, hosting virtual panel events in partnership with the Multnomah Education Service District.

McGee has observed how the pandemic has introduced much of the country to the concept of public health as a major player in social infrastructure.

“Over the last 19, 20 months, it’s probably the most we’ve heard people talk about public health,” she said. “Public health has been defunded, underfunded, and then here we are thrust into a public health response.”

McGee added that the important role of public health agencies can often be undermined by agencies’ successes -- “the complexity of being able to demonstrate the return on investment on prevention.”