Parents Invincible is a partner of the Camden Health Coalition of Healthcare Providers. Together they have been gathering information from the members of the Camden community about their current attitudes, knowledge and concerns about COVID-19 vaccinations. In doing so, the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers seeks to raise vaccination awareness and education. “This partnership is important because it allows our organizations to share resources and information we can utilize to better serve our community,” stated Shirley Irizarry, Executive Director of Parents Invincible. 

The Camden Coalition observed an opportunity for better coordination among partners and a larger role for community-based organizations to leverage existing relationships for more equitable and patient-centered strategies after observing the difficulty healthcare organizations faced in deploying COVID-19 testing that was accessible to our highest risk neighborhoods.

For these reasons, the partners decided to leverage the trust that their organization and partners have with clients to conduct a local survey to understand the specific attitudes and insights that exist in our community with regard to vaccines. 

As they engaged local and national partners they had several key observations:

• NJ adult vaccine rates tend to underperform national averages 
• Camden providers believe that vaccine confidence is low in the community;
• Camden providers seem unsure of their ability to build vaccine confidence; and
• Misinformation about vaccines is prevalent and this misinformation is nuanced.

The information obtained from these surveys will inform the future direction of the Coalition’s COVID response work in Camden and beyond. If interested please click the link to our survey.