Yolanda Vera:“ Help is not going to come from the outside. There’ s not going to be a Mighty Mouse flying in.”
Yolanda Vera:“ Help is not going to come from the outside. There’ s not going to be a Mighty Mouse flying in.”
Yolanda Vera is Senior Health Deputy, LA County 2nd District. In that capacity, she oversees health care, public health, and mental health issues for Supervisor Holly Mitchell. Ms. Vera previously was the Chief Executive Officer of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Outpatient Center( OPC) for nine years. She serves on the board of the MLK Health & Wellness Community Development Corporation in South Los Angeles.
Yolanda Vera
She also served as a board member of the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California and the Centinela Medical Fund. She is the former director of LA Health Action, an organization that worked to expand access to health coverage and care to all Los Angeles County residents through policy and advocacy, coalition-building, linking of existing resources and grant-making to local, community-based organizations.
When I was leading the MLK outpatient center, what we started to do is try to figure out who are those influencers in people’ s lives that might make them more open to a vaccine. And at first, we started with some of our medical professionals who were available.
And we started things like having people wear tee shirts and be available to answer questions. And we also moved to a hotline where people could confidentially call, including staff. Some of the medical staff were hesitant about getting vaccines. They were embarrassed about it. This way they can just call and get their questions answered about effects and consequences.
Places like barber shops were safe areas, but it’ s for people who are on the fence. There are the hardto-reach ones that really, really don’ t trust at all. It needed to be more of a conversation with folks about some of the medical consequences.
And it was really fascinating what people told them. Everything from mistrust about the vaccine, thinking you’ re trying to shoot COVID inside me; to fear, rarely legitimate fear about I’ m a single mom, I can’ t afford to have any side effects, because who’ s going to take care of the kids? And we had some folks who thought the vaccine was the mark of the devil. And there was nothing you could say to convince them otherwise.
I work for Supervisor Holly Mitchell. I think she is at the point where we have given people access to information. We’ ve done a tremendous job of making it easier for people to get vaccinated, there’ s all these community and mobile sites; 400 plus, set up throughout the county. We’ ve set up sites in the schools to make it easier.
And at a certain point, we have to walk the talk and she was fully supportive of mandating it. Especially for public facing employees. We have health services, parks and other things, first responders, sheriffs. The tension is how do you mandate it and still allow for some reasonable exceptions for medical reasons. I feel like many people are driving a truck through the personal preferences exception by claiming it. But at some point, I feel like when you look at the science repeatedly, it shows the benefits.
Every day I get emails from the Department of Public Health, clear correlation with rates of hospitalization, and whether the person was vaccinated before dying. It’ s an interesting dynamic now in the public health world. Before there was a push to make it easy, make it easy, make it easy.
So I think, at some point, you get to people’ s deeply held beliefs and, and that’ s where we’ re at now, there’ s still a few, if we make it easier for them and
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 33