TITLE
Recommendation to request City Attorney to create a resolution for city council consideration recognizing the “Carmen the Caregiver - We Can Do It!” Campaign, by SEIU 2015, to encourage, support, and normalize mass vaccination against COVID-19 among in-home care providers, nursing home worker, their families, their communities.
DISCUSSION
As of February 2021, over 73,000 Long Beach residents have been vaccinated, [1] with the City serving as a nationwide model for effective vaccine rollout.[2] Nonetheless, the demographic breakdown of administered vaccines highlights existing disparities, as the majority of those vaccinated have been older, white residents from the City’s east side, where COVID-19 rates are the lowest. [3] Moreover, historical inequities in healthcare and other manifestations of systemic racism have contributed to vaccine skepticism among communities of color-particularly the Black community-with only around 42% of Black adults reporting that they would consider taking the vaccine, despite the fact that this population is the most likely to report personally knowing someone who has been hospitalized or died as a result of having the coronavirus. [4]
In an effort to vaccinate its most vulnerable populations, the City has prioritized frontline essential workers, including the long-term care workforce. This population-encompassing workers from nursing homes, assisted living facilities, In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS), and private agency homecare workers-has been especially vulnerable to contracting COVID-19. Earlier in the pandemic, long-term care facilities were an epicenter for the virus, with roughly 40% of all COVID-related deaths linked to such facilities.[5] Despite their vulnerability to contracting COVID-19, healthcare workers, many of whom BIPOC women, have also expressed resistance to getting vaccinated, citing concerns surrounding the speed of vaccine development, the immunity it confers, and long-term side effects.[6]
The in-home care provider and nursing home provider workforce is represented by unions such as SEIU, which predominately comprises women of color. Current worker protections are particularly crucial for this population, as the pandemic has highlighted the indespensible nature of the long-term care workforce in maintaining community health and stability, and the need to engage this population in further education, outreach, and other linkages to ensure their own health and safety is guaranteed. Therefore, SEIU Local 2015, California’s Long Term Care workers organization, has launched the “We Can Do It!” Campaign to encourage, support, and normalize mass vaccination against COVID-19 among the SEIU 2015 membership, their families, their communities, and the State as a whole.
In conjunction with International Women’s Day on March 8th, the Long Beach City Council should commit to support the SEIU Local 2015 “We Can Do It!” mass vaccination campaign, and unleash the collective power to create a long-term care system that reflects the essential nature of the work and prevents future failures to protect both workers and care recipients. Utilizing a lens of equity, the campaign will work to target the most COVID-impacted communities in Long Beach, establish a network of distribution centers that expand the scope and accessibility of the vaccine to the City’s caregiver communities, and organize and facilitate the distribution in a way that instills the utmost confidence in the vaccine.
Statement of Urgency
Due to the critical nature of this issue urgency is requested on this item.
FISCAL IMPACT
Due to time constraints no fiscal analysis was conducted.
SUGGESTED ACTION
Approve recommendation.
Respectfully Submitted,
REX RICHARDSON
VICE MAYOR, NINTH DISTRICT