Vaccine Equity Fund
Vaccination coverage remains uneven across the country. With growing spread of the more transmissible Delta variant, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are once again rising, largely among unvaccinated people.
Persistently lower vaccination rates among the BIPOC community compared to other community counterparts leave them at increased risk, particularly as the variant spreads.
Reaching high vaccination rates across individuals and communities will be key for achieving broad protection through a vaccine, mitigating the disproportionate impacts of the virus for people of color, and preventing widening racial health disparities going forward. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has indicated that vaccine equity is an important goal and defined equity as preferential access and administration to those who have been most affected by COVID-19
Program Purpose
- Provide direct monetary support to low income and BIPOCindividuals who have not been vaccinated.
- Offer a grant of $250 for each vaccinated individual and up to$1000 per household.
Experience
- Existing partnership with the State has allowed us to build out clinic sites with an ability to scale as needed.
- Our current Governor’s Equity Clinic has served 2100 people and administered 3,600 vaccine doses to date.
- Our Low Wage Workers Fund, established to provide monetary assistance to those who had Covid and lost wages due to quarantining, has paid out 297 grants to date and is still going strong.
- Village Exchange Center is a founding partner of
the Left Behind Workers Fund. Our experienced team and technical infrastructure can be applied to our Vaccine Fund to maximize synergies.
Program Details:
- VEC provides financial support to any low income and/or BIPOC
person that is receiving a vaccine. - We provide $100 upon the first dose of the vaccine and $150 upon the second and final dose of the vaccine one month later.
- As VEC constituents are approximately split between Adams, Arapahoe and Denver counties, if we receive approval for additional funding we can ideally deploy to other equity clinics. First in the three counties and next across the state.