Project HOPE, HRSA Expand Access to Thousands of COVID-19 Vaccines

Though COVID-19 vaccines have been widely available for months and have proven effective in preventing severe COVID-19 illness, many parts of the U.S. lag in vaccination rates — especially in the South.

Project HOPE, thanks to funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration, is supporting free and charitable clinics as they work to improve vaccination rates in underserved communities across five states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Three of these states — Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana — have some of the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates in the country.

To date, Project HOPE has helped administer more than 20,000 COVID-19 vaccines through our partnership with HRSA, including more than 14,000 booster shots. COVID-19 outreach materials have reached more than 350,000 people, and charitable clinics in five states have been able to hire 159 new community health workers.

Read on to visit five charitable clinics Project HOPE is supporting in Alabama and Georgia and learn more about the health workers campaigning to increase vaccination rates in hard-to-reach areas across the South.

In Atlanta, a single highway can determine a person’s life expectancy.

At Good Samaritan Health Clinic in west Atlanta, quality of life depends on what neighborhood you live in — and the social determinants of health that come with it, like economic stability, access to education, and historic discrimination that makes care harder to access.

There is no one barrier that prevents people from getting vaccinated. But in underserved communities, the challenges are compounded. The charitable clinics Project HOPE supports serve patients that are low-income or do not have health insurance; many have struggled with homelessness, incarceration, or documentation. For some communities, there is long-held mistrust about health systems. For others, something as simple as transportation or scheduling around work may be what makes the difference.

One hundred miles down the road in Columbus, Ga., the staff at MercyMed is busy providing primary care (and COVID-19 vaccine referrals) to patients who do not have insurance. But they’re also treating their patients’ whole health by offering vision services, dental treatments, mental health counseling, physical therapy, nutrition, and wellness classes. All services are available for patients on a sliding scale at low cost.

The clinic is a one-stop shop for health care, but it’s also a safe space where patients know their doctors by name and know they won’t be judged. For those who have had difficult experiences with health services in the past, that doctor-patient relationship can be one of the most important they have.