(film reel clattering) - Welcome to Ethnic Media Services' tracking the impact of COVID-19 and the campaign to vaccinate all 58 counties.

I wanna give a special thanks to the California Department of Public Health for sponsoring these briefings that allow us to spotlight what's happening with the pandemic and the vaccination campaign in largely rural and suburban counties far from the metropolitan and coastal cities where so many of us work.

I'm Sandy Close, EMS director and today's moderator.

We look today at COVID and vaccines in San Joaquin County, one of the state's smaller counties by area with a population of roughly 970,000 that is increasingly diverse.

Stockton, the county's largest city, counts 30 languages spoken at home, and it's a population that's growing fast due to overflow from the adjoining Bay Area's lack of housing.

Located in the northern part of the Central Valley, this largely agricultural county ranks 31 among the state's 58 counties in the number of adults who have completed the primary COVID vaccines.

San Joaquin County has the highest number of deaths from COVID compared to other rural regions in the state and is facing unique challenges in raising booster rates among adults and vaccine rates for younger kids.

And now, we begin, and I'm delighted to introduce Jose Rodriguez, who's president and CEO of El Concilio.

Thank you very much, Mr. Rodriguez, for joining us.

- Thank you for the opportunity to be with you this morning.

So, I'll just get-- I'll get started.

Just to share a little bit about El Concilio briefly.

El Concilio is a large community-based organization that provides a multitude of services to the community-at-large in San Joaquin County.

We have everything from Head Start, to child development centers, to immigration services provided by attorneys, workforce development programs, transportation programs, and a lot of programs that support families by providing them opportunities for literacy.

We have seniors-- programs for seniors, and just a multitude of programs.

And, as an organization, we've been around for 54 years.

And so, over the course of time, we've been able to earn the trust of the community and establish really good working relationships with so many partners in the community, such as Public Health, and some of the other panelists that are here today.

When COVID first started, we were concerned because we knew that it was going to be disproportionately affecting the Latino community, simply because of the fact that many of them were, because of the nature of their work, were essential workers and were still going to be out working rather than staying at home like the rest of us.

And so, as an organization, we had to remain open to provide the childcare to these workers, to provide them the services.

And so, we wanted to get ahead of the opportunities for them to be able to get tested and began advocating to make sure that whatever health services or healthcare was gonna be provided related to the pandemic, that the Latino community, marginalized communities, the constituencies that we serve, would also have access to those services.

So, one of the things that we did initially, recognizing that San Joaquin County is a working class community and that many of these folks have limited access to healthcare, we wanted to make sure that what was going to be available was strategically used to be able for them to access it.

So, one of the things that we did is we formed a committee of community partners so that we were able to then strategize our advocacy work, and then the access to the healthcare that was going to be available.

Initially, our advocacy work started with the testing.

We wanted to make sure that our community had access to the test.

And so, one of the things that we advocated for was that the test be taken out to the community where they were working, rather than expecting people to go to normal, traditional places where they would go like community clinics or Public Health.

So, one of the things that we did was advocate, and that strategy has served well now that we're into the vaccines.

Because, the most important thing to realize is that in order to get folks to participate, is that you really have to go out to where they are rather than expect them to come to the vaccines.

One of the things that-- one of the ways that we've been able to do that as an organization in collaboration with others is to go out into the community where the people are.

So, for example, every Sunday we're out at the flea market, and it's there, every-- it's stable.

Every Sunday, same hours; people can come get vaccinated, get the health information that they need to be able to make the choices that they need to, but they know that it's consistent.

We're there every Sunday at a place that they feel very familiar with and very comfortable with going.

So, in strategizing where we wanted to-- how we were going to make sure that our community had access to the information and the vaccines, we began to look at who was able to reach certain constituencies better than us, for example, and then have each organization that was part of this collaboration reach out to their constituency to make sure that people got the information that they needed.

For example, in working with the NAACP, we knew that they were best equipped to reach out to the African American community; and working with Little Manila, we knew that they were best equipped to reach out to the Filipino community.

But, we wanted to make sure that all our partners that we were working strategically to make sure that we would make the most of the opportunities for folks to get vaccinated.

Because once, you know, we set up an event, we wanted to make sure that all the vaccines that were available were used up by the community.

So, and as Dr. Park mentioned, one of the biggest challenges that we have had is the disinformation that's out there regarding the vaccines and what they do to people in terms of the-- some people thought that they put chips into you, some people thought that they caused infertility.

So, a lot of the work that we've done initially has been education to make sure that people understand about the vaccines, answer their questions and concerns.

It's amazing how well informed these folks are in some instances in terms of the differences in the vaccines.

Some of them know that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, when it first came out, had some problems.

They know that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was a one-time shot, whereas the Moderna and others were two-time shots.

And so, they had a lot of questions regarding that, and then the availability of the vaccines.

Our concern now in going forward is that we feel that we've done a lot of work to create an awareness and to create access, but now that we see that the concern or the momentum that we created is sort of diminishing, sort of like the interest in the pandemic has waned, while other people, I think, are focusing on other things like the economy, gas prices, and things like that.

Since masking is no longer mandatory, there seems to be not as much concern about the pandemic or getting vaccine as there was before, and that's a concern for us, because instead of ramping up these campaigns now, especially where we're going into the fall, and we know that there's probably gonna be another surge, we see less and less public campaigns in terms of commercials or efforts to encourage the community to get vaccinated.

So, we're really concerned about that, because we know that the way things-- one of the things that pandemic did is it exposed a lot of inequities.

And, our concern is that as we go back to what we're calling "normal", that some of those equities are not gonna be addressed and that we may find ourselves in a situation again where we have a lot of folks getting sick and taking up the hospital space.

- [Sandy] Thank you.

- Thank you.

- This is such a wealth of information and sources from a part of the state that's so important, but we don't often have access.

So, my thanks to you again.

Our next speaker is Kevin Sunga who is health director for Little Manila Rising.

Thank you, Mr. Sunga, for joining us.

- Yeah.

Well?

Thank you very much, Sandy, and good morning to everyone.

It's a pleasure to be with you today.

My name is Kevin Sunga, director of the Equity and COVID and Health Outcomes, or ECHO program, here at Little Manila Rising.

So, a little bit about our program.

Our program helps increase COVID-19 testing and vaccine clinic access across South Stockton, California, host educational events addressing COVID-19 and intersectional health topics and address health systems barriers affecting our community.

Our program is one of the newer ones, and there's a signal of growth for an organization that began cultural and historical preservation for the Little Manila community in Stockton, which was home to the largest population of Filipinos in the world outside of the Philippines from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Now, we're continuing a legacy catalyzed from the unfortunate passing of our co-founder Dr.

Dawn Mabalon, moving into addressing health inequities through environmental justice work, asthma mitigation, and now COVID-19.

Now, we're also expanding our perception as an organization in understanding the injustice and the inequities are not just applicable to Filipino community, but in other South Stockton communities.

So, we serve the needs of roughly 82,000 people of color constituting mostly Latinx, Black, Filipino, Cambodian, and Hmong populations who face, and still face, discriminatory policies.

And today, I really wanted to highlight the barriers in vaccinations for our Filipino population, and what we're doing to address those issues.

So, in the past year, we've helped facilitate at least 1,500 COVID-19 vaccines to individuals in this community.

But, we've had our shares of struggles in trying to accomplish that.

We learned through our experiences and through resident's experiences from our Filipino community that difficulties in increasing the vaccination rate is due to difficulty of access of vaccine information, whether through language, or technological, or even both those barriers, and also misinformation.

Vaccine information is often in languages-- vaccine information's often in languages inaccessible to community, which is a huge issue if you're serving a diverse community.

There would be some information available in languages such as Spanish, admittedly not enough, but there is a gap in translated information, Tagalog, and in prominent dialects such as Ilocano.

And also, most of our city's vaccine and clinic info are available online, which poses an additional layer of difficulty in access.

We've met many people, predominantly our elderly population, who don't have smartphones and have trouble navigating and accessing online information.

And, I remember, just reflecting on stories, like spending about 30 minutes with a "lola", or Filipino grandmother, at one of our clinics at the Under the Bridge farmers market.

And, I spent time helping her book an appointment using the My Turn app on my phone, 'cause she didn't have a smartphone herself.

And, she was ready to give up in the booking process because of how difficult it was for her, but we were able to get her through the process.

But, unfortunately, that is an all-too-common story.

And, we've also seen that social media, specifically video-based platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram, plays an equal role in misinforming our community as much as it plays a role in informing.

Some of the myths we've come across, especially in our Filipino community, are how COVID-19 vaccines adversely affects expecting mothers and feeling that vaccines are not effective, because they were rushed by the government.

And so, for our approaches to combat some of these experiences, which is what many of the-- some of the partners have already shared too, is we've shifted to more direct engagement approaches and focused on leveraging partnerships by community mapping.

So, the ethos of meeting people where they are, as Jose said, really helped our work.

Though we still use social media to share information, we integrated more in-person interaction activities.

We've relied on canvassing, knocking on 55,000 resident's doors, set clinics up in areas where community convenes, such as the farmers market Under the Bridge, which is AAPI-hosted, and sent 60,000 texts sharing where clinics are in our area.

And, to combat misinformation, we've hosted a variety of educational sessions, such as focus groups, COVID ambassador workshops, town halls in different languages, and we have these in smaller group settings where we'll have one-on-one time with community members.

We've seen that in more intimate group settings, people are willing to share and engage in dialogue.

And, focusing on individual interaction promotes a feeling of connectedness, which is what's needed for a community that feels disinvested.

The idea is that by directing our energy in a smaller setting, we provide our undivided attention to answer questions and concerns from our community.

And, our hope overall is that we created trusted messengers in the process, having them become an advocate for their community with information we provide.

And, also maintaining a presence, consistent presence, has been very helpful.

We've launched a bimonthly Instagram Live with Filipino-American critical care pharmacist, Dr. Freddie Rayray, which we're calling "Hard Pill to Swallow" which is low commitment and casual way where we discuss COVID-19 related updates, health-related issues affecting our Filipino community and a platform where community can ask questions from a licensed clinician for free.

And, we're hoping to expand this programming to in-person.

- [Sandy] Just because of time constraints.

- Yeah.

- Mr. Sunga, that's a splendid presentation.

You mentioned-- two quick things.

You mentioned the incredible impact the pandemic has had in isolating people and keeping them from having fun.

And, maybe you could speak to that, and then your main concern and recommendation looking forward.

- Yeah.

Looking into the future, I really hope that this-- the conversation around COVID includes initiatives around recovery and community-building.

You know, the pandemic brought isolation that left marginalized communities feeling more marginalized, and we see that loss took shape in many forms, such as physical loss and loss in celebrating life milestones and togetherness.

And so, what I'm hoping for, what I'm looking forward to towards the future, is to continue supporting for COVID services, but also turning our attention towards mental health and treating comorbidities that are exacerbated with COVID, such as asthma and diabetes.

And also, my last recommendation is with the second round of ARPA funding on the horizon is for our local and county governments to make it really transparent where those funds are being spent, and I really wanna lift that funding into community recovery.

So, you know, maraming salamat.

"Thank you very much" for giving me this space.

- We next go to Sothea Ung, who is program director for APSARA, which serves primarily Cambodian residents of Stockton who comprise the largest concentration of Cambodians in Central Valley.

Thank you very much, Sothea.

- Thank you, Sandy, and for all your team that are having us here today to share our campaign with the COVID-19.

And also, I wanna take a chance to share a little bit about APSARA- you know- who we are, who we serve.

So APSARA, we own the apartment complex called Park Village Apartments with over 95% of the resident are Cambodian refugee.

They've been here since 1980.

We operate the housing, but we also have the in-house social services for the resident and for the surrounding community as well.

So, I have four points to share today.

One is who we serve and the challenge they face and also what APSARA role, and what is the key role for the vaccination in our community.

And also, what is the impact that COVID bring to our community, particularly for Cambodian but also as a whole?

And also, the-- a recommendation that I have from our lesson that we learned from the pandemic, and also the struggling that we have.

So first, a Cambodian-- a Cambodian community and as a Southeast Asian community as a whole, they are-- most of them live in the low-income environment.

They depend, mostly-- more than 80% of them are depend on government or public benefit, you know, like food stamp, SSI, SSA.

And, they are from the farming background.

They're very, very low educate.

They are low literacy.

They do not speak English.

They do not read, and they do not write, even their own language.

So those are we serve, and they-- majority of them have mental health because of the refugee experience- you know- torture, starvation, separation of the family, trust issue, and also connected to the culture and belief, the difference between the country they come as well.

So, those are the challenge.

There's an issue that already exists before COVID-19.

So, when the COVID-19 hit in early 2020, our role, what we trying to do is to bring the vaccine, or to bring the awareness and education to the community as fast as possible.

But, it took us such a long time.

It's almost over one year that, that we can host the-- that we can have the vaccine clinic for the community, like, respond.

And, thankful and grateful to the panel here, like Little Manila Rising and El Concilio.

We have our first vaccine clinics back in March and April in 2021 with El Concilio.

It's part of the agriculture clinics; this focus for the people who work in the farm.

But we can, you know, like coordinate and get the seasonal worker.

It's mostly the Asian community to get the vaccine, as well.

But, that's showing us that the infrastructure, the navigation issue, the system that we have is so complex, that's very hard for us to coordinate and work together.

So, another role that we play is we provide coordinated transportation.

We provide interpretation to the family.

We also help the family to navigate, you know, how to get the appointment in, because everything had to be done online and everything with on-- in English.

And, some of them, some of the system is transferred to Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, but not Cambodian.

Not Laos, not Hmong.

So, those are that they're lacking of.

And so, APSARA take it in and help people to access to those.

And, another key play that we do, we reach out to the underserved community, like a homeless community, the gang member, or the incarcerated, and also the seasonal worker who are moving from place to place across the Central Valley.

So, we also coordinate them and get them to the vaccine, as well.

And, we also host the community workshop where we invite the family, the doctor who are serving the community who are Cambodian, who can speak Cambodian, or who can speak the community language to host the community presentation so that it can share, you know, like Dr. Park have said that there's a lot of misinformation in the internet.

There's a website.

There's also the-- a lot of misinformation around the community.

And, imagine if that information in English, but also there are also in any different language, and the people who do not speak English could not access to the, you know, what is the true-- what is the actual information that from the CDC or the CDPH?

How much lost they are in to get those information.

So, we-- that's why we host the community workshop; to bring that-- to share what is the myth, what is the misinformation, and what is the information from the CDC or the CDPH.

So, what impact that bring to the community?

For us, the-- as Sandy and Dr. Park have mentioned, that the most diversity of the community and also bring challenge, right?

So, we talk about immigration.

We talking about deportation.

You know, family worry about immigrant status.

They do not have status.

They-- so that is their worry, you know?

Like so, when you're talking about vaccine or prevention, it's not their top priority.

So, that brings huge challenge.

Refugee background.

You know, they do not speak.

The language is a barrier.

The culture is a barrier, the belief.

And also, the-- how to navigate a majority of the office of the local agency who provides service to community close!

So, they only open to phone call and internet.

And, if you talk about the community who do not have English capacity, how they can access that?

So, that is a huge, huge challenge for those that can act-- to access to services.

Mental health.

As I mentioned, housing or homelessness.

Another issue is the gun violent.

You know, there's already violent already existing in the community.

But when the COVID-19 hit in, the violent calling you to increase and get more intent.

And, we also see a lot of the suicidal, family conflicts and violence in the community.

And, it's hard to walk around when-- after the sun's down.

And, even though some community even scared to get out from their home.

The healthcare access.

It's the same as before COVID and during COVID that we have-- we can host clinics, you know, but if it's far away from their house, it's not close enough and they do not have anyone to help them or trust in those clinics.

People don't go there.

You can see that there's less and less people go to clinics, go to vaccine.

And, the system itself, it's not built for such a diverse community.

The system is lacking in many way.

And, even though the provider is not represented to the community, as well.

So, who can play the big role here is a community-based organization, is a faith-based organization that can support the healthcare system to connect, to build a bridge in between.

And, we lack of that.

We need to work more on that path.

So, I think I have a few kinda like a suggestion and recommendation.

I think the way that... - [Sandy] I'll give you one minute, okay?

- Okay.

I think the way that the-- the pandemic also give us the chance that we should work together more faster, and then build a strong intervention and prevention, long-term infrastructure development.

I'm gonna wrap it up.

Okay, Sandy.

Go ahead.

- No, just-- just to wrap it up, it's such an important information you're providing.

So, thank you very much for that presentation.

You speakers have been extraordinary ambassadors for San Joaquin.

It makes us really want to do more to cover the remarkable efforts you're making to get us through this pandemic.

So, my thanks to each of you for your time and sharing your lived experience as well as your expertise.

And, a special thanks to our sponsors, the California Department of Public Health, for this series and above all, to our media for being here today and our interpreters.

I know we were speaking fast for some of you!

My thanks to each of you.

We'll be following up shortly.

And, again, this conference is closed with a huge shout-out to all of you.

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