Planning a Community Flu Clinic
By: Eliza Siebers
Tags: Flu, Students, Public Health, Community Organizing, Vaccines

Eliza Siebers — December, 2020

In October of 2020, I coordinated a flu vaccination clinic in my community. While we only administered a a dozen or so vaccines that morning, over half of the recipients had not gotten the vaccine last year, and 40% stated they wouldn’t have gotten the shot if we hadn’t provided it. With the COVID pandemic ravaging our state and country, it meant a lot that we were able to help even a few people keep safe from the flu and hopefully stay healthy this winter. In the following sections, I’ll explain my process in planning and executing this event, and hopefully help you construct your own community-based flu clinic.

Introduction

I started planning this project in the fall of 2019, and my original proposal was to host a flu clinic at my high school. Schools, especially those as big as mine, can spread illnesses like the flu quickly, and kids then take it home to their families and communities. The idea of the clinic was that students, both with and without private insurance, could be excused from class to get their vaccine within the building. Since most busy families struggle to get their vaccines between work, school, and extracurriculars, and many face other barriers like cost and transportation, providing the flu shot to students at the school would help keep kids and their families safe.

Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench in these plans when my school district closed in March of 2020. We have been online ever since, and thus vaccinating students at school was no longer feasible. However, I decided to use the infrastructure and connections I’d made to help increase the vaccination rate among a different, also vulnerable, population. I worked with The Beacon, a day shelter and resource center for homeless adults in my city, to provide the flu shot to the people who use their services. With COVID, it was very important that everyone got a flu vaccine, especially those who might be more susceptible to both illnesses because they don’t have the luxury of quarantining safely.

Defining the Population

The first step of planning a flu clinic in your community should be determining your audience, or the population you want to provide vaccines to. The population should be people who might not otherwise have easy access to the vaccine, or be at a higher risk for the flu. Defining the population will help you find partners, both individuals and organizations, and the details of when and where you’ll hold it. In my case, the original population was students at my high school, but then we transitioned to homeless adults in Madison.

Contacting Public Health

This project would not have been possible if it weren’t for the extremely helpful and generous partners I worked with. One of these partners was the Immunization Coordinator at Public Health Madison & Dane County. I first got in touch with her through a coincidental series of acquaintances, but there are usually directories and contact information on the website of your public health department.

When I first reached out to the Immunization Coordinator about providing flu shots to high school students, she was receptive, and explained that the department would be able to provide the vaccine for students without insurance or with insurance through the state’s BadgerCare. At that point, I was also looking for a pharmacy to partner with to provide the vaccine for students with other insurances. When we switched gears to vaccinate a smaller population of homeless adults, public health was able to provide all of the vaccine, so this wasn’t necessary. If your population has a mix of insurance statuses, you’ll have to look deeper into where each subset would get the vaccine from.

Finding Administrators

Another great partner I worked with was a professor of nursing at Edgewood College, a local private university. I got in touch with her through email. She volunteered her group of six senior-level nursing students to administer the shots at the clinic. They were able to use the experience as one of their “clinicals,” and all of the students indicated it was a positive experience in a questionnaire I gave them afterwards. I would recommend researching and reaching out to a local professor in the medical field about volunteering their students to help with the clinic.

Troubleshooting

The day of the clinic went quite smoothly with relatively few incidents. Because of COVID, we set up the vaccination station in the open air, under a tent in the courtyard of the Beacon resource center. When we arrived, the director of the center, let us know that he had just heard about a flu clinic held at a local church the night before, where a lot of the same clientele stayed overnight. This meant we didn’t get as many people who still needed to be vaccinated, but I saw it as a positive since it meant more of the community was getting the flu shot. That being said, I would recommend looking into other events more deeply than I did, and try to coordinate timing and location if possible. Another suggestion to increase the number of recipients is to publicize the event beforehand. I designed and put up posters a few weeks before the clinic, but I think that doing even more publication could increase your turnout.

A final challenge we faced was just the general misinformation surrounding the flu and flu vaccine. A few people passed us by, saying that the vaccine would give them the flu, or that they didn’t trust what was in it. While we tried to quell their suspicions, it’s impossible for one clinic to correct all the lies about the efficacy of vaccines in general. I think this challenge represents a larger problem in society that we can work to combat, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you faced similar hecklers at your own clinic.