Public Health is for Everyone An inclusive planning toolkit for public health professionals

View this resource for frequently asked questions about the COVID-19 vaccine.

Ensuring strong demand for the COVID-19 vaccines is critical to achieving herd immunity, protecting the most vulnerable populations, and reopening social and economic life. But about 31% of US adults are hesitant to get a vaccine.1 Public engagement and clear and transparent messaging play a central role in building COVID-19 vaccine confidence.It will take a variety of strategies at the national, state, and local levels to engage with the public, address vaccine hesitancy, and build trust. At the local level, listening to community members to identify and understand concerns will help determine what messaging, delivered by whom, will be most effective.

The public's opinions on vaccination fall along a continuum, ranging from those who fully accept vaccines, to those who are vaccine hesitant, to those strongly or unequivocally opposed to vaccination (a very small minority of the population).2 The vaccine hesitant group is most likely to respond to efforts to build vaccine confidence. For these individuals, resources, information, and support are needed. This rapid expert consultation highlights strategies for engaging with the public and communicating effectively to ensure demand and promote acceptance. These strategies are informed by five principles for effective risk communication.

During a time when in-person interactions pose health risks due to possible exposure of the virus, lack
of access to broadband Internet can have far reaching consequences for older adults, such as
challenges enrolling in benefit programs that provide much needed financial assistance for needslike
food, health care, and energy assistance; challenges accessing services and being connected to service
and health care providers; and challenges with social isolation, including prevention of connection with
friends, family, and various support networks. Health and safety guidelines themselves can have the
paradoxical effect of increasing social isolation, particularly for older adults. Measures such as physical
distancing, stay-at-home or safe-at-home guidance, and limitations on interactions, services, or
gatherings in physical settings, while important for limiting disease transmission, can result in greater
isolation from others. State aging and disabilities agencies were asked if individuals that their agency serve have been impacted by a lack of access to broadband Internet.

Informational videos about COVID-19 in American Sign Language.

A new database will collect information from clinicians about COVID-19-related neurological symptoms, complications, and outcomes as well as COVID-19 effects on pre-existing neurological conditions. The COVID-19 Neuro Databank/Biobank (NeuroCOVID), which was created and will be maintained by NYU Langone Health, New York City, will be a resource of clinical information as well as biospecimens from people of all ages who have experienced neurological problems associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. The database is supported by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

In light of the global COVID-19 pandemic, governments across the world worked with pharmaceutical companies to develop coronavirus vaccine candidates at a record pace. Here in the United States, the breakneck speed of vaccine development has left state and federal health authorities racing against the clock to devise frameworks for how to distribute vaccines as efficiently as possible to hasten the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To aid in the effort to ensure these most vulnerable populations are appropriately prioritized for vaccination, ANCOR analyzed states' vaccine allocation frameworks to identify the extent to which people with I/DD have been included.

This document offers a quick visualization of which states have identified people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) and direct support professionals (DSPs) in high-priority tiers for receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. 

Provides location-based recommendations on where community members can get a COVID-19 test, fill prescriptions, and get a COVID-19 vaccine when distribution increases in the coming months.

COVID-19 is a disease caused by a virus that spreads easily and can make people very sick. Getting a COVID-19 vaccine protects against COVID-19, and is an important tool to help stop the pandemic. People with developmental disabilities, their families, and supporters play an important role in preventing COVID-19 by getting a vaccine. View this website for fact sheets with information about the COVID-19 Vaccine.

Black, Indigenous and People of Color, disabled people, higher weight people,and older adults have historically experienced and continue to experience discrimination by medical professionals. In health care settings, members of these communities face pervasive negative biases and inaccurate assumptions about their value, quality of life, capacity to communicate and make decisions, and likelihood of survival.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, these biases can have serious and even deadly consequences. Such biases may be exacerbated when hospitals are faced with scarce resources and must make decisions about which critically ill patients should receive treatment. The “crisis standards of care” which are used by many states and hospitals to make these decisions, have too often reflected these biases. It is crucial that these standards be tailored to avoid unlawful discrimination.