Victor Vela did not hesitate to get all two initial vaccinations for the COVID-19 virus as well as a vaccination booster. Vela, 78, said he and his wife will also get the fourth boost vaccine.
“We will get it the first chance we get,” Vela said. “We both know how important it is to both us and our community.”
Vela was the first executive director of Longmont’s El Comite, an advocacy group for the area’s Hispanics that started over 40 years ago. Vela praised efforts by El Comite and other groups to get Hispanics out to clinics to get fully vaccinated.
“I believe they did a good job at getting the word,” Vela said. “Either by phone, emails or out on the streets. I think people knew about the shots and knew where to get them.”
By all accounts, Vela said, those efforts appeared to have paid off.
At least 56% of Boulder County residents who identify as Hispanic have at least a partial dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Boulder County Public Health. Over 77% of the county’s white population got at least one COVID-19 shot, according to the BCPH.
“Ideally, it would be great if everybody will get the shot,” Vela said. “But we know that is not going to happen.”
Statewide, only about 39% of Colorado’s Hispanic population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 shot, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health. Hispanics have the lowest vaccination rate of any racial or ethnic group in the state, according to the Colorado Sun.
The CDPH says 77.18% of Colorado’s white population has received at least one dose of the shot.
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation analysis placed Colorado's Hispanic vaccination rate at 42%, according to the Colorado Sun. That still tied Colorado with Idaho as the second-lowest vaccination rate in the country and only ahead of Idaho, the Sun states.
Carmen Ramirez, Longmont’s Manager of Community and Neighborhood Resources, helped head up the early efforts to get testing and vaccines out of the county’s minority populations. Ramirez said using cultural brokers within communities of color has been crucial in reaching, informing and getting folks vaccinated.
At Timberline Elementary School almost 400 people were vaccinated in one day, and most were from the Latino and LGBTA community, Ramirez said.
The city also collaborated with Servico de la Raza - a Latino advocacy group based out of Denver - to hold a drive up clinic at Front Range Community College in Longmont where close to 700 people were vaccinated, she said.
Vaccine providers first had to build trust in different communities to get people into clinics, Ramirez said via email.
“The long standing disparities that existed prior to COVID brought forward the importance of trust, relationship, cultural competence, being in the community and working in collaboration with community/culture brokers,” Ramirez said. “These pieces were not in place and it takes time for all these to work together collectively.”
“It will be important to continue to sustain these connections and build resilience within our systems and community,” she said.
Although the vaccine clinic at the Boulder County Fairgrounds has been shuttered, the county continues to offer accessible clinics with bilingual staff on-site that can answer questions and administer the vaccine, Elizabeth Lawrence, spokeswoman for the BCPH, said via email.
Longmont’s St. Vrain Community HUB, 515 Coffman St., offers appointments every Tuesday in April from 3-7 p.m. as well as a $100 gift card to anyone 18 and over who is completing their primary series of the vaccine, Lawrence said.
A full list of local providers is available at www.boco.org/CovidVaccines.
