Alliance Partners with Business Leaders to Support Vaccine Acceleration Efforts
It is clear that approving vaccines is just the start of a very complicated process to get them administered. In our state as in many others, vaccine supplies are short, logistics are unpredictable, and getting vaccines administered to people continues to be a challenge.
Creating high-volume distribution sites is a high priority for King County Public Health officials. King County Executive Dow Constantine says to effectively control the virus and its spread, it will take 16,000 vaccines administered every day for six months. To address this need, King County announced four strategies:
- opening two high volume vaccination sites in South King County, eventually expanding to ten sites;
- deploying up to ten mobile vaccination teams to serve hard to reach populations, currently there are seven mobile units;
- supporting community-based pop up vaccination clinics; and
- engaging the business community to encourage worksite-based vaccination centers.
I’m proud to share with you that the Alliance was invited by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce (SMCC) and the Business Health Trust that it oversees, to participate in the business engagement initiative, in collaboration with King County. Thank you to SMCC Chamber President and, Rachel Smith and Sarai Childs, Executive Director of the Business Health Trust (both Alliance members) for including us, and for recognizing that the Alliance can make a unique contribution to this effort given our 17-year tradition of successful collaboration with all stakeholders – purchasers, providers and health plans.
The Bellevue and Seattle Southside Chambers, as well as Challenge Seattle are also involved with this county-wide effort. I am also delighted to be working again with Alliance supporter, Peter Adler, formerly CEO of Molina Healthcare, who will be serving as King County’s liaison with members of the business community. Our early goals include:
- developing a toolkit for communicating with employers on business issues;
- being the source of accurate information about testing availability and accuracy about vaccines that business leaders can share with employees; and
- supporting employers to organize pop-up vaccination sites, in collaboration with providers across the state.
I know you share my deep commitment to get vaccines in arms, so Washingtonians stay healthy, and the burden on our businesses is eased. I hope that what the Alliance learns from this effort in King County can benefit other areas of our state. If you would like to support this effort in some way or want to share best practices on how your county is approaching vaccine delivery acceleration, reach out to me (ngiunto@wahealthalliance.org) or to Theresa Tamura (ttamura@wahealthalliance.org).
You make our work possible and I thank you.
All the best,
Nancy