Dr. Diana Shiba:
“ Giving gift cards or prizes didn’ t have the outcome that I think our state legislature or legislators thought that they would.”
Diana Shiba serves as the Chief Government Relations Officer and Regional Assistant Medical Director for the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, Kaiser Permanente. She is immediate past-President of the Los Angeles County Medical Association( LACMA), and the first Asian-American female elected to the presidency in LACMA’ s 150-year history.
Dr. Diana Shiba
She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the California Medical Association. She attended Georgetown University where she graduated summa cum laude and was a Rhodes Scholar state finalist. She completed her medical education at the University of California, Davis, where she was the recipient of an academic four-year scholarship.
Within Asian culture, it’ s very much accepted to see multi-generational households where you take your parents in and care for them. I suspect that one day my parents will probably come and live with me. It’ s not uncommon to have parents living with their children in their elderly years.
Bringing the vaccines to them makes a lot of sense. The prospect of death is a very significant motivator. And that’ s primarily the reason why I think we’ re vaccinating for COVID-19 so that we prevent serious outcomes of the disease, which include life threatening hospitalization, or even death.
There’ s probably likely language and cultural competency. A great facilitator is going into the community not expecting the patients to actually come into the hospitals 10 miles away, but to facilitate vaccination by bringing the vaccine to them. I do think that an additional way to facilitate more vaccination delivery is to get it into the homes, especially for the elderly. I think there’ s definitely a need for that.
I think for those who are cared for at home, we need to get them vaccines into their homes, especially if they’ re staying with people who are too busy to take them to the hospital. In terms of additional barriers, there is definitely a level of communication and education that needs to occur. It needs to be transmitted in the various languages.
I know UCLA is doing really good work. Their Department of Public Health has been doing it since the pandemic started. They have their graduate students working on various social media posts about the vaccine about COVID, how to tell the difference between COVID, the flu and a cold.
The messages are translated into over 20 / 30 / 40 languages. I think the work that UCLA has been doing is what facilitates taking down some of the barriers to getting further into these communities.
One lesson learned is that some of the government programs, local and state, giving gift cards or prizes, didn’ t have the outcome that I think our state legislature or legislators thought that they would. I think it goes back to trust, whether that’ s trust within a community leader, or even their doctor or clinician. I think that I think that’ s a strong lesson learned when you’ re able to effectively communicate with the patient and get to that patient.
If people really understand the vaccine, the mechanism behind the vaccination effort, and the reasons for why the vaccine was developed, then it would make a difference. But I think so much of this has been politicized. And I don’ t know if that could translate into a lesson learned for future generations.
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 30