(calm music) - My name is Angela Williams.

I have been a nurse now for seven years.

I used to be an oncology nurse and now I'm an ICU nurse.

Working in ICU it's already stressful as it is, but then you add a pandemic on top of it.

It just takes your stress level on a level of, probably like a four and throws it to a ten right away.

I have my days, I definitely have my days.

To the say the least, yeah.

- [Miguel] The pandemic of COVID-19 in the hospital has been really, really traumatic.

I had never seen anything like this before, in my almost 30 years.

- If folks could see in an ICU and see people on ventilators and see people dying and see their families who can't go in there, and are scared for what's going on for their family members who are ill, they might take this more seriously.

- It was like a war zone.

I'd be walking a corridor in the ICU and I'll be looking at the room to my right, to my left and room after room after room, patients on mechanical ventilators.

(speaking spanish) - [Miguel] When we started to get more patients coming in with COVID, we quickly noticed that there was a disproportionate number of patients of color that were very sick.

I remember a week where more than half of all patients with COVID at my hospital did not have English as their first language.

And one of them was Elder.

He was critically ill.

He was moved to the ICU.

(speaking spanish) - Leech Lake is about 225 miles north of the Twin Cities.

This is a rural way of life here.

Hi, my name is Vince Rock.

I'm the Interim Health Director.

I'm also a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.

What everybody is noticing around here is the high amounts of funerals that we're having.

COVID-19 has impacted us.

(child whining) - Here baby, here.

Oh my goodness.

(laughs) - It's good working with natives.

I've worked with natives all my life.

I'm native.

(child vocalizing) Can you show me your teeth?

I look at a 'wild child' visit as an opportunity to talk about vaccines and an importance of them.

I would ask caregivers, "Have you had your COVID vaccine?

"Are you going to get it?"

What's your thoughts on that?

- On the COVID shot?

- Yeah - It's not for me.

- Have you heard of any bad experiences?

- I hear about it on the news.

And I'm not the only one.

Both of my older boys, they're not getting them.

He's not going to get him for his kids, and his wife's not getting it.

- You think it's not safe or?

- I'm just not getting it.

- Just not gonna do it?

- Yeah, just not gonna do it.

- Okay.

- [Vince] I know there's a wide spectrum of how we approach the vaccines.

We're not quite sure why, but I'm sure there's trust issues.

- [Roxanne] I don't know what the answer is to that.

Because you could talk yourself blue in the face and try and get people to understand.

And they still won't.

(child vocalizing) - Okay, we'll see how you feel about that when we answer questions about COVID.

- We like to go out there and get their weight and height, and screening like that.

I'll just get her hearing while you're here.

- That's perfectly fine.

- I'm Iris De La Rosa.

I have worked for Tri-Valley for about two years and I'm a program nurse.

We do provide education about the COVID immunization, and how important it is to get it.

And if that's something they're interested in we can get them connected because some don't have internet.

Some don't have a computer, some don't have those resources to do it.

- I'm definitely not doing the COVID shot.

I'm not giving it to my kids.

Especially because of her immune system.

- Is there certain concerns you have?

- Because I say we've survived Ebola, SARS, Anthrax.

And these have been short-lived viruses.

And then here comes this one that is just kicking doors down and just taking lives left and right.

So to be precautious, yes.

I had my mask on but a two year old kidnapped it.

(laughs) So a tendency to proceed with caution.

But as far as the vaccine, that's one thing that I stray away from.

Only because I'm seeing people already getting sick from it, even nurses and doctors.

- But when you say that you've seen them sick is that the same as COVID where you had- - Yeah, I've seen one nurse, she got the vaccine and she said that she was experiencing the shortness of breath, felt just really laggy, tired, and just lost the appetite.

And she started to feel depressed because she wasn't around her family.

She was isolated.

To see her go through that after getting the vaccine and it's supposed to be something to help?

I don't think I wanna venture down that road.

- What about her if she would have got COVID?

Would it have been worse for her?

- I'm pretty sure it probably could have been a possibility, but to know that she was trying to protect herself from getting it and that was the outcome?

- Well, you know, I'm on my Facebook and I see, "doctor died from COVID vaccine," or "nurse died from COVID vaccine."

I don't really read into it just because it could be something else.

And it was a coincidence.

A lot of it's just fake news.

- [Zeke] Vaccine hesitancy has been an issue for the past maybe two or three decades, certainly in the United States.

- [Miguel] I don't think anybody who is refusing the COVID vaccine is refusing for the same reason.

There's some big themes we know, but I think it's important to try to understand.

- Well like I said, I'm not pushy, just encouraging.

At the end of the day, it's your decision.

- You see how the dynamic just changed real quickly.

(Iris laughs) It's awkward for you that I came off aggressive kind of?

Is that it?

- No, I've encountered people- - Because I'm not an aggressive person, that's just my demeanor.

- Oh no, I'm not awkward at all.

I understand when you stand your ground, and that's why I say I respect your decision.

- Now if you said, "Hey today you gotta "get your Rubella shot," go right on ahead.

(Iris laughs) By all means.

"You gotta get your MMR," go right on ahead.

Tuberculosis, go right on ahead, Hepatitis go right on ahead.

Corona, I don't think so.

Don't feel safe.

Thank you, you're awesome.

Here, can you stand up and say thank you?

- Thank you.

- Thank you guys so much.

And I will bring this, just in case there's some families that don't attend here.

They can at least be informed, so I can help spread the word too.

Elbow to that.

(Iris laughs) - The biggest challenge for getting communities of color to get vaccinated is really the barrier of hesitation.

I grew up in north Minneapolis.

I'm African-American, so working on health equity and issues of, for example, vaccination are really important to me.

- And I think especially as a Black person, I was raised to kind of question stuff.

- [Zeke] As a Black person in America, you always have this low level, at least low level maybe greater, of anxiety everywhere you go.

- Black people have a hard time trusting doctors because of things that might've happened to them, their family member, or unfortunately the stuff in history.

Like you think of the Tuskegee trials.

- Hesitancy stems from what we all know as the Tuskegee study, where there were a group of men that had syphilis.

- [Zeke] And so they followed these guys with syphilis to see what was the course of disease and how did it go.

When the treatment for syphilis, namely penicillin, became accepted in the 1940s, they did not offer it to these people because they really wanted to follow the natural course of the disease.

It gets worse because then this continued on until the 1970s, until somebody from the press published some huge story about it and then the public was outraged.

There was this systemic process of dehumanizing people of color.

And particularly African-Americans in this country that has gone on for as long as we've been here.

- When we have that as a major part of our history, it definitely would make us reluctant to think about, "Okay so here's a new illness, "here's a new vaccine for the illness."

So my name is Teto Wilson, and I own this establishment.

This is Wilson's Image, Barbers and Stylists.

We've been in business here on West Broadway Avenue for eight years in this location.

We offer haircuts, hair colors, hair graphics.

We use the shop as well as a safe space for community to come in have conversations with elected officials.

These are just like community engagement conversations.

So, we use the barbershop for more than just cutting hair.

We really engage the community.

The coronavirus, it comes out.

And then we're talking about having a vaccination maybe like eight, nine months afterwards.

I think generally it takes years for, effective vaccines to be produced for illnesses.

And so now we're talking about a vaccine for a virus that has been around eight, nine months?

Very reluctant to take that vaccine, very reluctant.

And rightfully so.

Our history here in this country has not been friendly.

You know what I mean?

So, absolutely.

I was definitely reluctant about taking the flu shot.

I didn't want to do it.

I haven't done it.

And the Coronavirus, same thing.

- I'm Kelly Robinson.

I've been a nurse now for 27 years.

Black Nurses Rock, that's the name of the organization.

I'm the President of Black Nurses Rock, Twin Cities Chapter.

We've been a chapter now for a year, just right before COVID hit the world.

I'm also providing vaccinators for COVID-19 as well as testing for COVID-19.

And they're all nurses of color.

Our goal as an organization, as a group, as nurses professionally, we want to make sure that we're on the spot and we're actually vaccinating people.

But it's discouraging that in all of the vaccinations that we've done thus far, the percentage of African-Americans, it's just extremely low.

One of the biggest concerns that African-Americans have was when the researchers and the medical community started to talk about the mRNA vaccine and that messenger component, which was so new in terms of the technology and the development.

For an African-American with comorbidities, "Hey, I want to make sure that this is not something "that's going to harm me later down the road."

- So for the average person, vaccines are kind of a complicated science, no question about that.

Ultimately at the most basic level, the intent of vaccines is to give your immune system some familiarity with the infectious illness of interest, in this case COVID-19.

So that when your immune system comes across it again, it says, "Hey, I've seen that thing.

"Let's kill it, let's go after it."

And all of these vaccines are really focused around what's called the spike protein on the COVID-19 virus.

- The virus uses those spike proteins to get into the cell of yours that it wants to infect.

When people worry about, "I'm gonna get COVID from this," no these vaccines do nothing but produce spike protein.

There's no COVID in there.

But that's what they all do.

And they do it in very different ways.

The two mRNA vaccines, Pfizer and the Moderna, they do it by sticking a messenger RNA into your cell.

- Everybody's heard of DNA.

That's sort of your cookbook for 'how do you make an organism' that's in every cell of every living being on earth.

RNA is a step removed from that.

It's essentially saying, let me take one recipe out of that cookbook, 'cause I want to make one thing.

And so these vaccines work by taking that recipe and delivering it inside of another cell.

Your own cells eat that up and then use your own cellular machinery to make something from that.

- And they instruct that machinery to make spike protein, and that spike protein gets on the surface of your cell.

The immunity that it generates to that spike protein is the immunity that protects you.

- Some of these whole virus vaccines, which are more similar to what we're familiar with in the past, essentially just do it by giving you an inactive form of the virus to attack, just not the protein alone.

But at the end of the day, what I can tell the lay person is if you want to know, "Well, gee, "which vaccine should I get?"

I would say, get the one you can get soonest.

- Nobody would have even dared to hope that we were going to have a vaccine as good as this one appears to be.

It's miraculous, that the amount of disease prevented is going to be huge.

- NRC is the National Resource Center, and it is a project funded by the CDC through the university of Minnesota, seeking to develop resources for refugees, immigrants, migrants with regards to COVID-19.

And so my role within National Resource Center and now focusing more on vaccine efforts whether it be education, access, or the whole spectrum in between among refugee and immigrant communities.

What are the challenges being faced?

How can public health groups, community organizations, healthcare teams, provide access to vaccines among these communities?

Many of which have been already disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

There's been a lot of media coverage about communities of color and trust around the vaccine, information that's being spread about the vaccine that's often false.

This isn't a situation that's unique to communities of color, and it actually extends to everybody everywhere.

- Hey Hoda.

- Hi Christine.

- How is your day going?

Well, thank you so much for taking a little bit of time to talk to me this morning.

- [Hoda] I do think that there are more people interested in the vaccine.

They have a few questions about it, and I have reached out to- - I was just kind of thinking of different ways that I personally could be more involved with the COVID vaccine efforts and noticing how much misinformation was out there and what can we do to help people become aware of what the COVID vaccine is and how it can actually help them.

- There is a hesitancy, especially with my community, with Somalis.

The younger groups feel, "We're very healthy.

"I exercise, so COVID will not happen to me.

"And if it does, I won't die.

"So why do I need to get the vaccine?"

The elderly people are saying that, "If it's my time to die, "and if Allah wants me to die, I will."

- Given the trauma that some African communities have gone through when they were colonized by the Western world, they still have the problem, we still have the problem, of trusting the Western world completely with our lives, our heart, and all of that.

- There was an unfortunate measles outbreak a few years ago when people were not wanting to vaccinate their children because of this belief that the children could get autism.

And so this fear about autism I think kind of played into that measles outbreak.

And then now what we have, as you know, there's mistrust around vaccines.

- My earlier work, looking back through some of the research that's been published around vaccine attitudes in general, there's some interesting findings that found that among refugees and immigrants, for example, the longer they were in the U.S., certain communities would acculturate to the U.S. and with that came some of the U.S. beliefs around vaccine and vaccine hesitancy.

And so there is that concept too, that we have to recognize as a society is that trust and that communication is present in all of our communities not just white or communities of color.

But it's really something that needs to be addressed everywhere.

- In Latin America we are educated to be vaccinated since the time we are born.

So it is kind of natural for us.

And we understand because it's been our history, that the vaccines have been helping our communities to be more stable healthwise.

But we are in the middle of some sort of unfortunate series of events that have come together and confused people.

- Yes, it is different because it's a pandemic.

It was created in a year and then all these people, adding a lot of myths and scare into our communities.

And I think those are the the major reasons why, that they decide not to take the vaccine, are kind of scared to even take it.

- There is a lot of word of mouth that happens in the community.

There's a lot of stories that folks have heard or there is a lot of perhaps wrong associations.

- It's a fascinating subject, what it is that actually convinces people to get vaccinated.

Science guys like me talking about data, basically don't convince a lot of people.

So one science guys spouting data may convince another science guy, but mostly people come with their own conclusions and then go to these weird sources because they want reinforcement for the conclusion they have in their gut.

- I think it's always a good thing to ask questions about medications and vaccines.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But if you are firmly against it no matter what and you, in fact, believe that vaccines are terrible?

I think that that's a group that's going to be really difficult to reach.

- There is vaccine hesitancy or concerns, which is circulating in the social media.

- Given the way technology has become, people just cut and paste things.

They create things and put out there to scare people.

- Again this is not just communities of color.

They're concerned that vaccines have microchips and then the government's going to be tracking them.

- [Iris] Get microchipped with a vaccination.

- Microchips - Chip - Chip - Chip - Chips.

- Bill Gates is somehow wanting to kill Africans by giving them the vaccine.

- [Zeke] And then maybe that sounds crazy to you and I, but again these are the fears that people have.

- When you have that history, it doesn't sound silly to us.

It doesn't feel silly to us.

You know what I mean?

It feels real.

This may be really far-fetched, but I heard someone say that they're injecting people with the strain of HIV.

- They think that it's gonna give them COVID.

- It's COVID, you're giving me COVID.

- They're testing it on us.

- I heard that the vaccine is not that safe.

- There are videos about a lady who got the vaccine and then fainted.

And that turned out to be nothing related to the vaccine specifically.

- Are we getting a diluted version?

- They're using current aborted babies to make the vaccine.

- The vaccine will infiltrate your DNA, and then you won't be able to have children, it will reduce your sperm.

- So it will affect our fertility.

- Is that true that alien substances are being used to develop the vaccine?

- Messenger RNA is something that is going to be used to cause mutation.

- That they will turn into a crocodile.

They won't be a human anymore.

- [Colette] They've said, if you take it it's going to turn you into a zombie.

- Don't become a zombie.

- Oh are you checking in on me to make sure I've not become a zombie yet?

- "You got the vaccine?

You know you'll become a zombie."

I was like, "I would have been already a zombie."

- [Christine] All sorts of things that are not true.

But then again, they're being shared widely.

- It's enough to make people that are reluctant, remain reluctant and resistant to moving forward taking the vaccine.

- Those are kind of the fears and the concerns that we have to combat.

And that's the role of public health professionals and health professionals like myself to really speak to the science and really speak to the safety and really speak to the protections for what we have going on here in the United States that hopefully have people's best interests in mind.

(speaking Spanish) - So we have two kinds of families.

We have families that came from different parts, Texas, Florida, different states.

And they decide to set up roots here.

Then we have the families that go back and forth.

(speaking Spanish) - [Iris] We serve migrant families, migrant agricultural workers, that come to work on the fields, to work in food processing plants.

I feel the families feel comfortable with me because I can speak Spanish and I can relate to their situations, being that my parents are Mexican American, and that I'm aware of the situation that there is undocumented people around.

So I think they trust me that I'm not out there to go and see who is not documented and who is.

We all make them feel safe.

- [Barbara] Pedro and Jocelyn came from Honduras, and they have their child here in Tri-Valley.

- [Iris] They came to work for the canning company.

They work long hours, 12 hours, six days a week.

- [Barbara] Mom works during the day.

So she leaves at six, comes back at six, and dad works at six in the afternoon to six in the morning.

So they kind of alternate their shifts to be able to take care of the kids.

They do have a lot of struggles.

Medical, transportation.

(speaking Spanish) - So migrants are people who travel more than a hundred miles and look for work, but do not make this place a permanent home.

- [Rodolfo] They are very vulnerable because they don't have insurance or because they don't have the language or they don't have access to resources.

Very difficult just to find them where they are.

So to deliver not only the vaccination but even the information about vaccines is really tough.

- [Christine] Workers in agriculture in some of the food processing plants, they're at higher risk of COVID-19 based off of often closer living quarters, shared transportation, working in close proximity environments.

- [Iris] The families in this community and families that we see, they were afraid to say that they felt sick or anything because they were going to be out without pay.

So then you would see a lot of COVID spreading within and people are getting COVID and still working.

- So they are a very essential group of people to be able to offer a vaccine to.

(speaking Spanish) - [Iris] In the community, I feel that they're scared because of what they see on the internet about COVID vaccine.

Because the one story of one person died because they had the vaccine, then they think that something's going to happen to them.

- [Rebeca] There's nothing wrong to get vaccinated.

We have done different kinds of vaccines since we are kids and we're still here.

And we have people like me, pro-vaccine, people that really hate vaccines, and they say, "Well, I'd never get that vaccine."

And we have the ones that don't have information.

We can not force the people to take it, but we gave them all the tools that they need to make a smart decision in regards to vaccination.

- [Miguel] Not in a paternalistic way, not in an imposing way, but in a respectful way, we know that when patients and families do receive good quality, in their language education, they do change their beliefs.

- [Iris] So I think that eventually they will get it, but I think that we just need to kind of work with them.

To let them know that it is safe.

- Well, for me personally, I believe in science and I believe in public health.

So I do not have any fears about the vaccine.

But communities of color, again, with healthcare and healthcare research not taking their concerns seriously.

I think there's hesitancy in healthcare professionals too.

I'd like to think it's a lot less, but I'm sure it exists.

So being a Black person myself, when it came to the COVID vaccine, like many other people, I can't speak for all Black people, I was quite skeptical.

I'm like, "How in the world did these people "come up with something so fast, I don't understand."

- I feel that I am a little bit, scared.

- You listen to the hype, "Oh it's coming so fast" and "why is this one "almost done where as for years it took three" "four or five years."

- The long lasting effects, we don't know what they're going to be really.

So, that's just my thoughts.

- Well, when I came to deciding if I wanted the vaccine or not, when I think about all the the COVID patients I'd see, regardless if you're young, old, healthy, or not you could be one of those patients in that bed.

Realistically you could.

- So we all generally had concerns, but the scientists that developed the vaccines started to communicate just a little bit more.

And that provides some confidence in terms of how the study is deployed, who's being studied in the research aspect of it, and the results.

- What helped make me feel a little bit better is doing my own research outside of the media, outside of what crazy people were saying about COVID and their personal thoughts and getting down to the actual research, it came down to me basically feeling at the end of the day, true they came up with the vaccine in what seems like a short period of time to us.

But in reality, they've been working on mRNA vaccines for a good while, longer than I've been alive at least.

- On this one, your left or right arm.

And the other two, your sticker.

- [Kelly] So for me, being vaccinated now I'm not concerned with going into a building where there are people that are underserved that need the vaccine.

I will still protect myself, but there's a peace of mind that I have knowing that I'm fully vaccinated.

- [Iris] I think it was just our minds.

We still have in the back of our minds, some sort of worries, but I feel confident in getting it.

And this won't only help me, but help others.

- [Kelly] I think the more people that are vaccinated then they can tell the story.

And so that's what I've seen.

So I've been very public, I posted my pictures and I've encouraged my nurses that have received the vaccine to do the same thing.

Because we're trusted messengers.

People know that we're going to tell you the truth.

We have no reason to lie, because we don't want to harm our people.

We want to help.

And so we're hopeful that our conveying of what our experience is, is enough to people to say, "Okay, I know somebody that got it "and they're okay."

- That's your airline ticket out of here.

- Thank you!

- [Frank] If they see people they trust as individuals getting vaccinated, then they're more likely to get vaccinated.

That's why our nurses for instance, are going to be so essential.

Nursing is actually the most trusted profession of any.

Not necessarily nurses telling their patients, but nurses telling their friends, and being public about getting it.

And giving people the impression that it's the obvious right, common thing to do, is probably the single most important thing to get people to accept vaccination widely.

- When it comes to vaccines, I think healthcare professionals have a wonderful opportunity to be role models.

- And I think it helps when people see an image of a Black doctor, a Black nurse, a Black healthcare professional, getting the vaccine.

They can say, "Gee, you know "that person was brave enough to do it.

"Maybe I can do it too."

(gentle music) Or, if that person can be available to ask those questions.

- [Miguel] I've been asked many times by patients, and I've been asked by family members, by neighbors, and by friends, "Did you get the vaccine?"

So I think people are looking for examples of who is getting the vaccine, and who's not getting the vaccine.

- [Rodolfo] Speaking about the vaccine, I am eager to have it.

For the good of the herd, we need to be vaccinated.

- [Colette] When I finally get fully vaccinated I can now go out and help give the vaccine to other people.

I can be out there more knowing that I am fully protected.

- [Rodolfo] I know that this is a very good way to deliver a message.

I'm going to tell my community that it is important.

And that's where I am doing it.

- So you guys are an example of somebody who took the vaccination, and you both are safe.

All you felt was a little thing.

- For education and dispelling misinformation, we've hosted several videos where we talk about the vaccine in Somali, primarily, and in English.

(speaking Somali) - Less about forcing my way of thinking onto someone else, more about understanding where they're coming from and trying to meet them at a point where people feel a little bit more reassured.

- We just have to communicate better with our population.

It really comes to trust.

- You are educated, you know medical more than us and you are one of our own.

We can trust you.

- [Vince] The delivery of health care in Native American culture is always best if you can be approached by someone you trust.

It really makes a difference to have native practitioners.

- A few people, my dad and my boss included, they both got very, very sick after the first vaccine.

- [Roxanne] I got the Pfizer and after my second shot, I just had a bit of a headache.

- I feel like it's easy for me to talk with people, where you have that connection.

Where you have that similar background.

You know that they understand what you're talking about.

- I think they get what I'm saying.

And then there's that comfort that allows the person to ask questions.

(relaxing music) - If you're talking to someone that looks like you there's a general sense of "I think this person understands me."

- Is there any truth to the vaccine altering your DNA?

- Hell no, no.

- [Man] Hey Doctor.

- Yes sir?

- Where is all these viruses coming from, bro?

Why are they being created, man?

- [Zeke] So basically, coronaviruses have existed forever.

Your common colds and all that?

That's all coronaviruses.

They're the same family of viruses.

- [Man] So it's like the flu?

- [Zeke] I mean it's been around for a long time too.

- So, the social aspect of the barbershop this is a place where fathers bring their sons to talk about all sorts of topics.

We touch on sports, we touch on politics, we talk about the issues of the day, just like the coronavirus.

We have these conversations daily.

Especially when the coronavirus was new.

And then the conversation about the vaccine started happening.

We definitely go back to our history.

And talk about, what is it they're trying to do to us now?

What are they gonna inject it us now?

- And so if you had it accessible everywhere, and they knew they could walk down to their local church, their local barber shop, their local clinic, and get a vaccine, that would help.

And a lot of people would do it right away.

But it would probably still be a lot of people who wouldn't.

And I think some of it would take some of the healthcare professionals who do work in the community to really keep having these discussions and making sure that they're taking people's questions and concerns seriously even if they're not based in facts or truth.

(speaking Spanish) - [Miguel] I never spoke with Elder while he was in the hospital.

Every time I saw him he was on a ventilator.

(speaking Spanish) - [Man] Looks like this brother knows what he's doing, man.

- [Zeke] Whatever venue I can find where my voice can be helpful, I want to be out there and hitting those messages hard.

I feel I very much, more than any other point in my career, have a responsibility to do this.

- All right people, we're live.

Thank you all for coming in.

We here today to talk about COVID-19, the vaccine, and the Black community.

- Once enough of us are vaccinated that virus doesn't have anywhere to go to.

So my whole hope of being here is to answers some questions, dispel some myths, hopefully break down some fears.

- As you know, I will say you're the expert as a doctor, for saying you're on the trials.

You guys know that you're still collecting the data.

So at this point, we're still at an experimentation stage.

Don't bring that to Black men doorstep asking us to be experimenting with these folks.

We can't do that especially when we're the one being gunned down out here on these streets.

So you gonna kill us with the gun, or you gonna kill us with the needle?

- There's this conflict in me.

My mama said, "Go get the vaccination".

My daddy said, "I don't know about that."

But because I wanna hug them, my answer is yes.

Because I want them to live and I want to live.

But I have some hesitancy for a variety of reasons.

- I do encourage folks to take it based upon the knowledge that I've received.

Because it can help in our community, I believe.

But racism continues to exist in healthcare.

- So when it comes to our community, when you have so many things that's going on at this moment, and I know it sound conspiracy theorist until you watch the interviews when people are literally asking Bill Gates about the vaccination.

- So first of all, I appreciate what y'all are saying, and I want you to know, even though I'm a doctor even though I'm working on this trial even though I do very much believe in vaccines, I ain't got no problems with what anybody's got to say, good or bad.

I have to be that cat who's down here talking about it.

I'm the only Black researcher in my institution.

Not Black male or female.

So how does that make me feel?

Look, that racism James is talking about, I even as a doctor and a researcher am nervous going to the doctor, period.

It's even worse for those of us who aren't working in healthcare.

James is right, we have to acknowledge that.

- I was like, "No way, I'm not having this vaccine.

"I don't know anything about how long it takes."

I'm hearing all these things about what's going to be in the vaccine.

It's going to be reading your DNA and mutating and all kinds of sorts of things.

I was like, "No, I'm not havin' it."

So where am I at now?

Where am I at now?

Today, I wanted to tell everybody it's not a big deal, but you'd be happy to know, I took the vaccine.

- Oh you got one?

- Absolutely.

So now I'm a proponent of the vaccine.

This vaccine is real.

That's what gives me hope is that it is real and that people that want to take it will be able to take it.

You know what I mean?

And if it's gonna save us, prevent us from dying, I mean we all gonna die at some point from something, but none of us want to die prematurely.

So, it gives me hope that as tragic as COVID has been, that we have something that will combat it.

- [Christine] So in thinking about other role models for effective vaccine messaging, I think we really need to look broadly and widely at leaders, whether formal leaders or informal leaders.

- For the people of influence, who are the people that already they naturally trust and trying to work through some of those trusted individuals that can really convey the message.

(speaking Spanish) - [Teto] I'm prayerful, and I don't know if going back to normal is ever going to be a reality.

I think we are faced now with a new normal.

- [Iris] Beyond trying to limit the number of human lives that are lost, if we want any hint of normalcy, trying to go back to life at least in some sense of how it was, we need to take the vaccine.

(speaking Spanish) - [Christine] If we get as many vaccines into people as quickly as possible, that's going to provide the most benefit.

But there are still unknowns.

There are still the unknowns of what this virus is going to look like a year from now.

- [Fozia] We have a virus that's racing with us by changing.

- [Miguel] When we talk about the possible hurdles as we move forward, as we try to get over the hump of this horrible pandemic, misinformation certainly is a big one.

But I think complacency is another one.

- [Iris] I think that chunk that's remaining will be those people who are hesitant to get the vaccine.

And so the challenge will be to address their concerns and try to reach them.

- [Christine] But then also, we have to actually be able to provide vaccine.

And so transitioning from just talking about the vaccine all the time to actually being there, being in these communities and saying, "Here I have a vaccine for you," I think is the other part that's going to be really essential and something moving forward as vaccines become more available that we really need to focus on.

- [Vince] So December, the vaccine started rolling out.

In fact, Cass Lake was the very first place in the nation to receive the vaccine through Indian Health service.

After we use all those and we used them quickly, there was no vaccines.

We were wondering when the next ones were coming.

There was a little bit of despair and concern there.

But we grew from that.

We grew from all the trial, some of the tribulation there.

They really have developed a wonderful delivery system where we can mass vaccinate.

Walk in, sign up, get all the information you need about the vaccination, go through the line, get vaccinated.

And it is heartwarming to see younger people come in and get the vaccine.

I'm very proud of our staff and I'm very happy that we could help our community and those communities around us.

(moving music) - I think for the Somali community, the more people that we are able to vaccinate, just by being vaccinated they will then motivate other people to get the vaccine themselves.

- Take the vaccine to the community.

- [Hoda] More recently this year we've been partnering with local mosques here.

So that gives me a lot of optimism.

- [Kelly] We are living in a time that's like no other.

To be in it and to live through it and to see the numbers in terms of deaths, it's one of those things where in my moments, it's painful.

I start thinking about the people that you have vaccinated, the people you want to vaccinate.

And then, you turn on the news and it's just sadness.

You can't focus too much, because there's so much to be done.

But it's slowly growing in terms of the access for the vaccine.

And one of the most recent things we've done is to show up in prominent African-American churches where people can come in the neighborhood and receive their vaccine.

And I'm grateful that I have 48 nurses, men and women who support what I'm doing in Black Nurses Rock, Twin Cities Chapter.

- [Kelly] Good morning, everyone.

- [Everyone] Good morning.

- So today is our last day for this month and we have had a successful month.

(everyone clapping) So I don't know the exact numbers but I know we did upwards of a thousand.

We want to make sure that if anyone comes and they look like they are of age let's make sure that the people that need it get it.

Because that's the overarching goal.

We're in this community, we want to serve this community.

I think we have two people that are already out there that we can visibly see.

Chances are there are people in the parking lot.

- [Man] No, it's a line.

(Kelly laughs) - Didn't take long, huh?

Thank you guys.

(inspiring music) - [Kelly] As nurses, we take pride in what we do.

This is our season right here.

We know that we're the vaccinators.

We are the people that implement what needs to be done.

- [Iris] We have learned so much through this pandemic response.

We have learned how as public health measures come out, how to implement those to protect those who are most vulnerable.

- [Vince] Be grateful for what we have, because if we didn't have it what would be, this virus would be going out of control.

- [Rebeca] Little by little, we're getting to the end of this, hopefully.

The vaccine gives me hope.

- [Miguel] We've lost a lot of human beings through this pandemic.

The pain is immeasurable.

But I am hopeful that as we continue to learn from each other.

I mean from science, but also from each other, I think good will overcome the evil of the of the virus.

- [Colette] In the long run, I think that even when COVID is gone, we have to work on building our communities and helping each other grow so we can be more prepared and more stable for future pandemics because hey, this might not be the last one we see.

- [Kelly] How can I make a difference?

I've put my name on the dotted line.

My mission is to see this through.