The U.S. faces one of the most consequential public health campaigns in history right now: to vaccinate the population against COVID-19 and, especially, to get shots into the arms of people who cannot easily navigate getting vaccinated on their own.
Time is of the essence. Widespread vaccination is one of the most powerful and effective ways to slow, if not stop, the virus’s spread.
Mobilizing large “vaccine corps” could help to meet this urgent need.
We’re testing that concept right now at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. So far, 500 of our students and hundreds of community members have volunteered for vaccine corps roles. Our graduate nursing and medical students, under the direction of local public health leaders, have already been vaccinating first responders and vulnerable populations, demonstrating that a vaccine corps can be a force multiplier for resource-strained departments of public health.
On Feb. 16, we helped launch a large-scale vaccination site in Worcester, Mass.
Importantly, a large vaccination corps that includes local medical and public health students could help reach residents who might be missed by public campaigns and hospital outreach efforts. Students often represent their region’s races, ethnicities and backgrounds, which can make it easier for them to connect with communities that are hard to reach and might not trust vaccination.
The problem of getting people vaccinated quickly isn’t just about supply – it’s also about having enough people to carry out vaccinations.
If quickly mobilized on a large scale, a vaccine corps could directly meet three important challenges: accelerating the nationwide rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, ensuring that doses are distributed equitably to all and delivering on the promise that all Americans are able to benefit from major medical and public health advances.
Medical, nursing, pharmacy and other health students, as well as retired or unemployed clinicians, could deliver shots, monitor people who were just vaccinated or schedule the second doses.
In particular, a large, well-organized vaccine corps could play a crucial role in reaching out to communities that are underserved, overlooked or hard to reach.
Corps members could staff phone banks to help people who lack internet or struggle to use online scheduling systems find vaccines in their areas and make appointments.
Our students in the vaccine corps have already helped administer vaccines in public housing complexes and homeless and domestic violence shelters. They could also provide transportation to vaccination sites or take doses directly to homebound elders who cannot safely venture out.
The U.S. has a long history of creating health corps. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the federal government launched the volunteer Medical Reserve Corps to mobilize current and former medical professionals and others with needed health skills during emergencies.
This concept could be expanded, including by partnering with universities, to have a wider, game-changing reach. The model of service our students are testing opens up many possibilities, limited only by a lack of will and imagination.
Dr. Michael F. Collins is chancellor and tenured professor of population and quantitative health sciences and medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Distributed by The Associated Press.
