The Community Ambassador Real Equality (CARE) initiative — a collaborative effort between PATH, Mountain Community Health Partnership (MCHP), MAHEC, Pisgah Legal Services, and Yancey Emergency Management — was formed in October 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the Latinx community in Avery, Mitchell, and Yancey counties. For the past year, the initiative has been generously funded by the AMY Wellness Foundation through their COVID-19 Rapid Response grant program.
Since vaccines have become widely available, the group has widened its focus to include increasing vaccine uptake through personal interactions and one-on-one conversations between ambassadors and individuals in their networks. The conversations have been a highly impactful way to share information, influence health behaviors, and keep up to date with rapidly changing health recommendations. One community ambassador estimates that the CARE Team has reached over 500 people through personal interactions. This does not include the thousands of individuals the group has reached through social media, flyers, and other campaign efforts.
The ambassadors meet regularly with agency professionals to receive ongoing training and updates related to health impacts and prevalence of COVID-19, the legal rights of undocumented and DACA recipients seeking COVID-19 testing and vaccination, effective public health messaging strategies, motivational interviewing, and local access to resources, testing, and vaccinations. In turn, the ambassadors educate the agency professionals about Latinx community values, methods of communication, perceptions and timely concerns about COVID-19, barriers to access, vaccine attitudes, and experiences/needs/successes of their community outreach. As our community continues to deal with the continued evolution and lasting impacts of COVID-19, the community ambassadors have identified mental health and substance use issues as areas to expand our efforts.
Meet the community ambassadors and learn more about the initiative here. The initiative was highlighted in the July issue of the North Carolina Medical Journal. Read the article here.
