The leaders behind Vermont’s effort to vaccinate Black, Indigenous and people of color are launching a new organization to centralize the state’s effort to lessen vaccine disparities.
It’s called the Vermont Health Equity Initiative and was announced Wednesday at Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger’s weekly press conference. The organization is born out of the Vermont Professionals of Color Network, the group leading Chittenden County’s vaccination efforts for BIPOC community members.
The organization will centralize information and resources on its new website about the state’s Covid-19 recovery and vaccination efforts for BIPOC Vermonters, said Belan Antensaye, a staff member in Burlington’s Office for Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging and a board member of the Vermont Professionals of Color Network.
On VermontHealthEquity.org, users can find dates for clinics and sign up for events about vaccine safety and progress in the state. But the organization also has larger plans.
“Really the goal here is to create a long-term vision around health equity in Vermont,” Antensaye said. “The goal here is not only for BIPOC organizations and BIPOC-led groups to be at the table, but to really be at the head of the table.”
Beyond Covid-19, she said the group plans to address issues of health equity and disparities by working with different organizations throughout the state. But for now, Antensaye said the group’s main focus is in its vaccination effort and Covid-19 recovery aid.
While Vermont leads the country in its vaccination rates, disparities remain between the rate at which white Vermonters are getting vaccinated compared to BIPOC Vermonters. More than 63% of white people have gotten at least one dose compared to 57.4% of BIPOC.
The disparity worsens In Chittenden County, where 70.8% of white people have gotten at least one shot compared to 58.4% of BIPOC. That’s why the BIPOC-only clinics in Chittenden County are trying to create a welcoming, accepting environment, Antensaye said.
“The goal is to be the least clinical clinic, the least medical medical experience anyone’s ever had,” Antensaye said, “so that they can disassociate from other negative experiences they’ve had.”
Luis Calderin, also a board member of the Professionals of Color Network, said the Vermont Health Equity Initiative has received a $200,000 grant from the Vermont Department of Health to support its work. And he said the group expects to tap into other government funding as it moves forward.
Calderin said he views the new organization as a “silver lining” of the pandemic, when longstanding BIPOC health disparities became impossible to ignore. They will persist unless intentional changes are made at the community, city, state and federal levels, he said.
Weinberger said he wants to address race-based health disparities through housing. During his State of the City address last month, he said that out of 6,000 owner-occupied homes in Burlington, only 18 are owned by Black families. He plans to hold a housing summit this summer focused on increasing Black ownership.
He said he envisions the new organization as a “long-term effort to systematically address racial disparities across all the social determinants of health,” including homeownership, wealth, child care access and education.
