Dr. Tracey Veal:“ The opposition’ s reaction is pretty weaponized.”
Dr. Veal brings over 30 years of innovation and growth in multiple facets of healthcare outreach and clinical operations at health plans, providers, hospitals and in pharmaceutical. She served as the COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Lead as an Executive Fellow with Los Angeles County Public Health( 2020-2021) after consulting for non-profit and private equity firms during the pandemic.
Dr. Tracey Veal
Dr. Veal was chosen as one of the nation’ s Top 100 Diversity Leaders by Modern Healthcare( September 2021) and a Public Health Hero by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. She graduated from Capella University in Minnesota with a doctorate in public health administration. She holds an MBA from Clark University and a Bachelor of Arts from Agnes Scott College in Atlanta.
Community engagement probably matters most. It’ s nice to have celebrities and people like that supporting you. But at the end of the day, the word of mouth matters so much. I know get out the vote became get out the Blacks and they use that same approach to canvass communities. But we would have had small armies had we had all the different coalitions that were trying to do that work together. I think it would have helped lift even more. Making sure we hire people from those communities to help do this work because then you have an embeddedness in the approach.
The major implications that I see is this pandemic will continue in the hardest hit communities if we don’ t take some drastic measures. Some of it, the mandates will help. But at the end of the day, there are still a lot of people who are not convinced.
The biggest lesson learned is trying to make sure we have a very extensive communication strategy to be prepared for the info dynamic of misinformation on an ongoing basis, particularly to add to what I call the Young Invincibles. These are people who are healthy, and they are totally convinced that they don’ t need to take the vaccine.
I always think about how important setting up vaccine clinics in meat packing plants in hard hit places early on. That could have been, you know, one of those great strategies. But at the end of the day, if the employers wouldn’ t allow it, or people hadn’ t had been educated enough to take the vaccine, it would not work.
I do think the opposition’ s reaction is pretty weaponized. But what I find fascinating is, because I work with a lot of different ethnic groups and communities, what I saw happen in a Native American community was eye-opening. When we think back to what the Native American and indigenous people endured, with smallpox being given to them in blankets, and some of the other egregious experiments that they endured as well. They took a different approach within their culture, in terms of protecting the elders, which historically, when I grew up, it was part of the DNA of the Black community.
Native Americans had COVID impact even above and beyond what happened in the Black community. And they also had some of the historic issues that we’ ve had. But yet, when I look at what they did to pivot, and to get everybody on board, they took it from a cultural standpoint and said, everybody needs to do this to protect the elders. And that’ s what motivated their communities to move forward. Somehow during the generations and all the ambient noise that has happened during the pandemic.
It’ s a standard that they use anyway, regardless of
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 25